travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind - seneca

Well, I've made it. 18 months later and I'm finally on the last entry to my cross country summer road trip of 2010. Though most of the posts for this journey has been out of chronological order, I've purposely saved the last post for the adventures of our last few days on the road. As we ventured back into the northeast there wasn't as much on our To Do list since this was more local to home and we'd been to the different regions before. Just as the first day and a half of travel was straight driving to get out of the northeast, the last 4 days was visiting family and friends with a couple sight seeing stops in between.

From the Great Smoky Mountains, our first stop was in Williamsburg, VA. My dad's brother and his wife live there and my cousin had come up for the evening from North Carolina to have dinner with us. It was quite nice and relaxing after spending the last few days in theme parks and campgrounds. The next morning we wanted to see historic Williamsburg since Molly had never been there before and so my aunt and uncle offered to take us to breakfast and show us around. It was funny getting their version of the tour versus one provided by the park; it was truthful and honest to say the least. And it was free so that is always a plus :)

We left around noon for Washington DC via Chincoteague Island off the coast of Maryland. I thought I had done my research fairly well but I didn't realize how much of a detour visiting would be and how little there was to do if you weren't going to the beach. We wanted to see the wild ponies as we both had memories of the books about the ponies. But as they are wild it's not guaranteed you'll see them. As we drove towards the visitors center we could see a couple in a distant field. The visitor center had that salty ocean smell to it which definitely reminded us of home.

We wanted to explore more so we opted for a short loop hike that offered a lookout to one of the common pony viewpoints. Bad decision. End of August means humidity and mosquitoes. And these were more the size of gnats so they were super super annoying. The only way to avoid being eaten alive was to run. But neither Molly of I are runners, or even in shape so it was like stop and go running with lots of panting. Wearing flip flops made it no less easier. The viewpoint was nice, but due to the attack of the biting bugs we certainly couldn't enjoy it. I don't think there are words to describe how swarmed we were and how all of them were biting. From the lookout we could see the same 2 ponies from earlier and they were just as far away; small brown and white specks in the distance. Getting a picture was no easy feat as I was forced to bounce from foot to foot to keep moving to avoid getting more bites than I already had. It was kind of like channeling Dory from Finding Nemo, "Just keep moving, just keep moving."

After running back to the car and praising our sanctuary from the bugs, we set off for Arlington, VA where Molly's sister Erin had recently moved to begin teaching at a local elementary school. Because Chincoteague ended up being a longer detour than I expected we ended up arriving a few hours later than planned. But we were still able to have a pretty good evening catching up and visiting.

We parted the next morning as Erin had to work and we had a day planned of sightseeing our nation's capital. We drove over to the National Mall and was on the lookout for parking. We pulled into the first garage that said public not realizing it was also a government building, US Agriculture or something. Anyway, the car had to be checked for weapons and/or explosives and the kind security guard discovered our camping hatchet in the trunk. We apologized and asked to be pointed in the direction of a different garage. One was just around the corner luckily. The garage fee here, plus all the tolls we paid the day before driving was the first foray back into the cost of living in the northeast. We'd been so "spoiled" for the last four weeks being in cheaper areas of the US.

As we walked towards the mall we passed by a building that's important but I can't remember the name, the front of the White House, and what I swore was the FBI building because it looked like the one on "Bones."

We officially "started" our tour of the National Mall at the Vietnam Memorial and after passing through there, the Lincoln Memorial. I had been there years ago with my family but Molly had never seen it. To be honest though, at that point I was more thankful for its public bathroom than anything else.

It was a gorgeous, albeit hot, day and we enjoyed our stroll along the reflecting pool towards the World War II memorial. I hadn't been there before so that one was really neat.

We walked by the Washington Monument, saw a small group of Amish and then took a right to get to the Holocaust Museum. The Holocaust Museum is a free museum and I had tried to go there on a college trip but they only admit a certain number of people per hour per day so they don't have overcrowding. We were able to get in this time and took the elevator to the top and began our historical education. A lot of the information and artifacts I'd either seen before or knew of but no matter what, being surrounded by all of it including video footage of the camp liberation and the American soldiers clean-up is just horrific and depressing. And unfortunately for me I tend to get really into dramatic, horrific events and feel like I need to read and learn everything possible. So I go home and invest myself for about a week until I get too depressed and have to stop. We were able to really go through all the exhibits and spent a good amount of time there, both glad we decided to come.

Late that afternoon we drove up I-95, paid all the ridiculous tolls and arrived at my college roommate's apartment where we had a very nice dinner and caught up on life before heading to bed and dropping her off at work the next morning. We then hit the road for our last driving journey together and arrived back at my house in Cohasset around 2pm. It was nice to be home of course but definitely strange in a way, especially since I in no way wanted to unpack, clean camping stuff and do laundry.

return to Paris

After visiting Tours on Saturday day, I headed back to Paris early Sunday morning. I was planning on seeing a few more things in the area by Gare de Lyon that I didn't get to see when I was in the city before. And I had til 8PM to do since my train to Milan was an overnight one. The train ride back was uneventful and very quiet; it was 8AM on Sunday morning though. When I got back to Paris, we arrived at the Montparnasse station and since I had no Metro tickets or small bills or coins left, I went to find a small market to get some food and change. Yet, in Montparnasse on a Sunday everything is closed!! It took me like 15 minutes to find a place with reasonably priced food. And on the way to finding the place I ran into the people on the sidewalks who want you to sign up for things. And since it wasn't my first encounter with them, when my response of "no Francais" prompted them to speak in English I decided to say "no English" to get them to leave me alone. Gah, not the best 30 minutes of my life...

After getting food and getting on the subway I make it to the Paris Bercy station where my night train would be leaving from, and a train attendant said they had luggage storage there as well. However, they didn't and I had to go to Gare de Lyon to store my bag. After finally getting all my stuff situated in a locker, I was now ready to walk around and visit the Maison de Victor Hugo at the Places de Vosges and the Memorial de la Shoah. Upon nearing the Canal St. Martin I saw an internet cafe and was very happy to check my email. And I got a soda with it.

After spending a blissful hour with the internet, I move on to the Canal St. Martin and at the head of the canal, the Bastille. A very gorgeous statue in the center of a rotary.

Next, I continue onto the Places des Vosges, an upscale park area that's enclosed by a square residential complex with very expensive restaurants and art galleries on the ground floor. Victor Hugo lived here for a time and his former residence has been turned into a museum.

The Maison de Victor Hugo was very informative, but like a lot of museums it assumed you knew the basic history of his life. There was a particular woman, whom I can't remember the name of, in his life that was very influential and the information plaques kept mentioning her like we already knew who she was. I didn't, so it was a bit of a mystery of putting his life story together. There was an entire floor dedicated the photographs of Hugo that were taken by his son, I think, and maybe some that were taken by himself. There were numerous photos of his family included too. The upper floor was the apartment section and they included a map of the original layout as the current one had changed since Hugo lived there. In order to make the museum one of his life, instead of just the period Hugo lived there, each room was decorated in the style of a certain part of his life. They had furniture and decorations from his other residences, or in the style of his other homes in order to get the feel of what it was like to live like Victor Hugo.


When I exited the Maison it was raining and I didn't have my umbrella. Therefore since the Places des Vosges was covered all the way around I took a stroll and looked in the windows of all the art galleries and became very jealous of the people eating delicious looking entrees in the restaurants. At this point, the closest thing I'd had to a real meal was QuickBurger so the jealousy came fast and easy. I was really tempted to steal the bread out of baskets that were just sitting by the registers unattended. There were a lot of people there...they would have never noticed...but I didn't. The rain had let up some by the time I'd finished my loop around the park so I headed out to the Memorial de la Shoah.

The Memorial de la Shoah which opened in January of 2005 is "the largest research, information and awareness raising centre in Euripe on teh unprecedented history of the genocide of teh Juews during the Second World War" (from the guide the Memorial gave me). The Memorial was extremely informative, almost a little too much for me. I was fatigued, partially sleep-deprived and maybe a little jet-lagged so my concentration was limited and I could only absorb so much information. The Holocaust is also a very heavy subject so the information weighed down on my brain a little more than a basic museum.

The entrance to the museum leads you through the Wall of Names. It is pretty much what you'd expect when you hear "the Wall of Names." It is a series of walls with the first and last names and year of birth of the 76,000 Jewish men, women and children who were deported from France between 1942 and 44. They are presented by the year of deportation and in alphabetical order. It's a powerful thing when you see all those names listed as its a visual cue to a tiny, tiny portion of the people who were murdered in the Holocaust.

Once in the museum you descend downstairs into the Crypt. It is a symbolic tomb, a large empty space with a black marble Star of David in the center of the space. In the center lie the ashes of victims collected from various camps all over Europe laid among the soil from Israel. The star is really beautiful and I like it better than the memorial that is near Notre Dame.

In a portion of the wall in the crypt are books of remembrance which commemorate victims of the Shoah. There is also a back room attached which house the police files on the Jews; individual and family records of Jews who were persecuted, arrested and deported. This was another visual aid to process the amount of people who were deported and persecuted during the Holocaust. The number of boxes with files in them in this section was outstanding.

After visitng the crypt, I go down another floor to the permanent exhibition where the history of the Shoah is presented. This section was not large in terms of space, but the amout of information presented was enormous! I tried to read as much as I could, but like I said above...the heavy subject matter combined with my tired brain made it more difficult. What I was able to read and absorb was extremely interestng and informative and gave me a different perspective of the Holocaust. There were only 76,000 Jews deported from France so in comparison to the number of Polish Jews (which was in the millions), it's very small. But there is still a rich history of Jewish acceptance and living in France so to learn about that was really cool. At the end of the permanent exhibit was a memorial to the children deported from France. The small room has floor to ceiling, illuminated walls with photographs of only children who were victims of the Shoah. There are around 3,000 photos and it's a hard-hitting room.

After finishing with the museum, the sun was beginning to set and everything was closing so I started the trek back to Paris Bercy where I spend an hour or so reading a book. When my train arrived I boarded and experienced my first European night train. I will discuss more of this in another post dedicated to all train travel later but I will say it was an interesting experience. We depart Paris and head into the night towards Italy. Arrival time in Milan was 630AM.