WW Too Tour (War and Wine Also!)
In the makings for more than 3 months is our upcoming War and Wine Too tour. Scheduled for this September and October, we’re planning our next adventure to Europe. This time the focus will be France, Luxembourg and Belgium with emphasis on both historic sites and vineyards. We’ll even squeeze in a visit to the Dordogne Caves to view the pre-historic cave paintings. Of course no trip to France would be complete without stops at some of the worlds most famous wineries and champagne cellars so according to the Boss, that’s what we’re going to do.
This adventure is about 30 days and begins in Paris where we land and pick up our rental car. After quite a bit of checking, we found a rental car for the entire time for less than $650.00 with the mandatory insurances. Off to the city of Caen (pronounced “Cone”) located in the Normandy region, western coast of France. The significance of this region is well understood so I won’t belabor the point only to say there are more than 17 museums and sites we plan to see during our week here.
Our next stop is Bordeaux and the beginning of the wine portion of our trip. I’m sure we’ll start drinking wine before then but this is our first “wine stop”. A few wineries are on the agenda, we still need to find one that has a cooking class included with the tasting. Bordeaux is also closely located to the Dordogne caves that have the most fabulous cave paintings on Earth. We plan to see a couple of these caves, one being Font de Gaume cave which reportedly has paintings dating back over 17,000 years.
From here we travel to Lyon which is known for fine dining, wine, a castle and a Roman theater. A few days to enjoy this small town then off to Bastogne via Luxembourg City. This area is well known for the Battle of the Bulge which took place in the Ardennes forest stretching from Luxembourg to Belgium. It is also closely located to the Maginot Line which was a French fortification built after WW1 to protect France from invasion by Germany. Guess we all know that didn’t work! Still, me and the Misses want to see this and the other sites near Bastogne.
Next, champagne! From Bastogne we travel to Reims, champagne capitol of France, where we will do a little cellar crawling and enjoy some of what France has to offer. Oh, did I mention that Reims is about a hour away from the site of Hitler’s Western Front Headquarters’? Seems this guy built a headquarters in almost every town in Europe, but only visited a few. Guess if you’re planning on being out of town a lot, probably makes sense to stay where you’re most comfortable. Anyway, on June 17, 1944 (11 days after the Allied invasion of Normandy), Hitler met with Field Marshals von Rundstedt and Rommel to explain to them that this invasion was nothing more than a diversion. The real invasion will happen later and through Calais so stop worrying and leave the troops where they are. Now fetch me my slippers….. This was the one and only time Hitler visited this headquarters but still, we’d (I) like to see it.
From here we can either make a quick trip to Calais and see the remains of the super-gun location or head back to Paris for a HO-HO tour of the city. Haven’t decided yet but we both may be a little full of the war part of this trip, that’s to be determined.
So, that’s the preliminary itinerary with a few of the highlights we plan to cover. May change a bit between now and September but probably not much. Since I was able to convince the little woman that War and Wine, Too was a cool name for this trip, I don’t want to push my luck.
‘nuf said.
Cheers.