Home  USA  Canada  France  Music  Automotive  Money  Cities

French History

France and French history is fascinating and easily accessed by driving tours and day trips. There are a lot of things to see and visit in France when it comes to history. I have put a few history itineraries together, mostly cribbed from my e-mails replying to people who write me offline asking for advice. It is always nice to hear from them and I try to reply when I can. - Narayan Sengupta

Strasbourg to Paris Itinerary

One of my favorite trips ever was one that my mother took me on to Strasbourg when I was a kid. That was when I first went to Strasbourg. I've returned twice. It's a beautiful, walkable city that's easy to take in as a tourist. What you may want to do is something kind of simple, such as:

1. Spend one day in Strasbourg; it's a very French/German city.
2. Rent car from Strasbourg to Paris. Have you driven in Europe before? It's great in the countryside, but not so easy in the cities.

Do the following by car, but allow about three days:

1. Strasbourg
2. Haut Koningsbourg - great medieval castle high up on a hill restored by the Germans when Alsace and Lorraine were theirs again.
3. Maginot Line
4. Verdun
5. Paris

Paris Itinerary

There is the Musee des Invalides in Paris. Napoleon is entombed there as well. It's worth a visit. There is also a little memorial/museum to the Holocaust right in the parvis (main square) of Notre Dame Cathedral, as far as I remember, but I have not been able to see it yet. There are also a bunch of forts around Paris that I have not visited and only "discovered" that they still existed in November. In fact, according to the fabulous IGN 907 map "France Forts et Citadelles" which should cost around $11-$17 (see http://www.themapshop.co.uk/france.htm), there are about 40 different forts (from old times to WWI) in the Paris metro area. The map covers all of France and shows forts going back to Vauban all the way through the Maginot Line. But it has a detailed map of Paris. I'm guessing that you should be able to get this map online or at various stores in France. It will prove invaluable. I happened to get mine for free with a fill-up at a Paris Shell gas station.

Normandy Itinerary

If you go to Normandy, it's, well, Normandy. You get the invasion beaches. There isn't all that much left, such as wrecked tanks or LSTs, etc., since it was all used as very precious scrap metal in the post-war rebuilding of Europe. However, there are monuments everywhere, a good number of bunkers you can go into, a decent (by French standards) museum at Arromanches - skip the one in Caen, Pegasus Bridge's museum, etc. None is comprehensive the way you would expect an American museum to be. But they are there. It's just really wonderful knowing you are in Normandy and hitting those same beaches. It's only about 50 air miles from one end to the other of all five beaches. Perhaps 70 - 80 miles if one counts all the squiggles in the road. You can also go down to Mt. St. Michel. And the cathedral of Bayeux is one of my favorites. It's beautifully lit up in gold at night. The museum of the tapistry is great. There is not much to it, but it is such a fascinating relic: only about three feet tall, but a few hundred feet long.

A one day D-Day Tour is way too short for you to take in anything other than drive by the beaches, almost. If you have a link with an itinerary of the tour, I would be happy to check it out for you. But still, even one day would be better than nothing. If you do go there, there is a brilliant new "Atlas of D-Day" (I forget the exact name) that I was looking at. It is very good and would allow you to have a better understanding of what happened, when and where. There is a lot of stuff that is easily missed. For instance, when we went this past time in November, we stayed in a town named Houlgate, which is a few miles east of the eastern-most invasion beaches. I drove all day going west looking at gun batteries like La Merveille, never realizing that the biggest one (or perhaps just one of the biggest ones) was actually in Houlgate, because it doesn't show up on any of the official D-Day itineraries.

There are lots of beach-side apartments and resorts too that are not all that expensive if you get lucky. You don't have to stay in Bayeux itself since the beaches are only 10-15 minutes away from there but also very close to Caen (20 minutes?) as well. Pretty much any place there will do. There are also lots of roadside hotels such as IBIS, ETAP, etc. They are all owned by Accor (www.accor.com ?). Please see the following links if you are interested in Normandy.

D-Day: Pegasus Bridge
D-Day: Longues-Sur-Mer Gun Battery
D-Day: Gold Juno Sword
D-Day: Utah Beach
Omaha Beach & Arromanches
D-Day: Caen, Museum of Peace
D-Day: Battlefields of France
D-Day: La Merveille Gun Battery

Verdun - Reims Itinerary

If you stay around Verdun, you get WWI and WWII things like the Maginot Line and where Patton's Third Army made its mark in Lorraine. There is also a moving American cemetery at Nancy. You can also visit Chateau Thierry and maybe take in a champagne tour in Reims. The cathedral there is one of France's finest, and was badly damaged during World War I, but rebuilt largely through the generosity of the Rockefellers. The plaza in front is where the European Union was born in 1962. And somewhere nearby is where Ike accepted the German surrender ending WWII in Europe. Oh, and one of my favorite non-WWI/WWII towns is this beautiful town named Laon. It's about an hour north-west of Reims. It's a hill top town with magnificent ramparts, good crepes, etc. There is also Pierrefonds not too far away. And you have WWI sites Compeigne (where the surrender was accepted to end WWI and the Germans accepted the French surrender in 1940) and Chemins de Dames also in the same region. I have always wanted to go to Sedan, but haven't. I think our cars get their name from this town. Also it was prominent in the Franco-Prussian War, WWI, and WWII.

If you're driving from Verdun back to Paris, then you may wish to go by Chateau Thierry, Dornan and Belleau Wood as you swing past Reims. :) Chateau Thierry and Belleau Wood are big American WWI sites.

Narayan Sengupta

January 11, 2005