So I woke up...... Lil groggy but good to go. The plan is to explore Bastogne..... Then .... I'm not sure.
Over break fast I decided tried to figure out were else I should go sooo I go to looking for hotels...I made a decision...time to head towards Normandy....so I will do it in a round about way.....I want to see Verdun....and I can break it up if I go say half way...put me finger on a map...Compiegne....found a room....done.
So I headed to the lobby to talk to the dude at the front desk. He fills me in...see its the first day of school. So they shut everything....all museums are closed....crap....another dude was behind me in bike gear and he summed it up with his comment....well that's a wasted trip now isn't it. .....I kind of nodded...frig. Ah well. Time to make lemons outta lemonade.  
I hopped on the bike and figured I would drive around a bit.....maybe things were open...denial is a bizarre thing. So I packed up ... I do have a process .....everything seems to have a place...I am kind of obsessing about keeping enough room in the top box to put me helmet in for when I go wander about when I stop. This lock that I have to carry around is a pain....but I figured a way to it all working. Seems I have packed enough socks for once....no chasing socks around in the morning....great workout but stressful. I am also glad I remembered to bring me outlet convertor....that would have been a pain. starting to feel like a vagabond....not in one place for too long. 
Either way the weather was as usual...ifffy.. so loaded up....sparked the bike up. Must say its running like a top. the 6 cylinder engine in that thing does have a sound that inspires....keep blipping the throttle just cuz its fun to do it. Have to say that the torque it puts out is crazy....I can keep it in 5th if i want to.....it can start in 5th....and carry on not too bad either. It also has the adaptive headlights...wonder if they are any good...not sure if I will end up driving in the pitch black but ya never know. So I am sure I annoyed a few hotel guests as I made my presence known heh heh...they should be up anyways I figure. No one threw a baguette at me which is also a good thing.
Off I slowly started to wander....I ended up finding the 101 airborne museum wahooooooo....closed...poop...dude was right...so much for the faint hope clause. Grrrrrrrrrr ahhh well...off I went to the town square....I decide to walk around for a bit. On the way I saw a sign for a museum on the main street....ouvert....wahooo.....parked (rock star parking again) and headed in. It was a private museum....there are tonnes of them I am learning. Seems collectors find war junk and just put it all together into a collection and for the price of admission you can have a look. The old guy at the counter was pleasant and for 3 euro...I was in. Well...he had some neat stuff andd I had looked through it all in about 5 minutes...I dragged out 5 more to not make it look like I ran through the place. He had a pretty cool paper weight of some "Nuts" I chucked at that. History lesson for those not in the know again
General McAuliffe was in charge when Bastogne was surrounded during the Battle the Bulge the 101 airborne division was defending the town. Well it seems that the a couple of German Officers showed up at the front line one morning with white flags waving asking to talk to the commanding officer. So the private didn't know what to do so they blindfolded them with the blindfolds they brought. Drove them around in circle for a while....and got them to the command post. At this point the officers gave an ultimate in writing to be delivered to the General. Surrender...or be annihilated. They grabbed the letter to give it to the General...he was sleeping...He was scratching his head and yawning...and asked to have the message read....he calmly responded "Nuts".... So the Germans needed a formal response.... so all the exec officers gathered...and collectively it was decided that his first response should go out. So they typed it up in a formal communication...
"N U T S"
Funny part is the Germans didn't get what it meant....long story short....as they were heading back to their line the officer that drove them back said look if you don't get it then it sort of is like "shove it up your ....." or something like that.  So the Nuts thing became famous and sure enough...I found the "Nuts" restaurant.   
So as I was leaving the museum I was looking for a keepsake...lots of bullets for sale....doubt that would go over well on the flight, bullet on a neck chain... so I asked the guy in my best French right hand making the action of lighting a cigar....and simultaneously saying Zippo.....He got it...see I still got me French....but he didn't have any He got a kick out of my obvious multilingual abilities so he dug into a drawer and gave me a post card....it was of General Mcaulif.....I didn't recognize him and he just kept pointing at the card saying "Nuts" lol....was kinda cool when I finally got it. Then I noticed some pics....where i was had been almost obliterated..the town had taken a beating.
Next stop check if the big Bastogne museum is open....just to see.....its just on the east side of the town....right next to the American memorial....and yup...it was closed...poop. So I went and checked out the memorial...It is very cool...it is in the shape of a circle built around a star....and the story of the battle is on the walls..its big and you can co up on the roof and see all the battle locations around the town...remember they were surrounded...the Germans were really close is what I got out of it, lot of Americans died in the forests of the Ardennes. It is really scenic too, pity.  
Most think that once Patton showed up all was done.....actually the Airborne guys were pissed, they never asked him to help them out. They thought they had it in control it was just a front on all sides, they are a tough lot. After the Germans ran out of steam, the allies had to straighten out the front line and get rid of the bulge. So from Jan on....some of the worst fighting for the Americans occurred in these forests and it was like a forgotten war. The woods are littered with relics and bodies still... Hard to imagine the reality of it looking about..its all so peaceful now.
With that...I decided....time to go to Verdun....its not that far away and is an important place. sorry another history lesson....The French prior to WWI had a philosophy of building fortresses....then surrounding them worth smaller forts and supplying them all with networks of tunnels and railway lines etc...always on the high ground. Well Verdun was such a place on the eastern frontier. So there was a lot of fighting to gain possession of the various forts to control the high ground during the war. It became a meat grinder per say. Both sides just fed more troops into it to burn them up and the side with the most left in the end would win....nice huh. Also by putting massive resources into there and the Somme...this limited how many reserves the Germans had to react to other offensives...such as Paschendale, and Vimy. Old school tactics but now everybody had machine guns...we are talking massive slaughter sadly. Verdun was also a very important place for the French and was to be guarded with religious fervor and they would not let it fall under any circumstances.   
I plugged Verdun into the GPS and off I went. This time I didn't even get lost....I also did not know what to expect to see in Verdun. I put the main memorial in the GPS....and let the pink line guide the way. After a while again.....memorials...small...ones....pop up...in a church yard....a country road corner in the middle of nowhere....and it has a feel about it.....very hard to explain....
Then memorials are every where...it would seem. So I stopped here an there and most are for French soldiers...every village I passed through had a memorial for "Les enfants de......" I know I am one to joke about the French fighting force as the best to buy a gun from ... never fired and only dropped once Ha Ha. The reality is the French held their ground pretty well against a larger force....but moral took a beating. They lost a lot of a few generations to prove it.   
I ended up on the Champ du Guirre.....and it turned into a windy treed in area....very green and lush....the area is a protected park. A memorial caught my eye....in the woods so I pulled in. It was a destoryed village.....that never rebuilt...on the road I wasa riding...that was the front line....so they left the remnants as a memorial...even the busted up breech of a big gun all blown up was laying in the rubble, Very eery......I was the only person around....silent....and no joking....the odd raven......  
I wandered around the rubble and shell craters for a bit...and decided to move on....to the memorial. As I was going along the windy road through the forest I started to notice....it was a forest....that has grown on what looked to be a moon scape....it was craters everywhere.....for kilometers with a forest grown over them.....was wild looking. But it gave an idea of how big the battle must have been and how many rounds were fired...millions.....anyhoo....I then found some trenches at the side of the road, then some blown up bunkers....and of course wandered around them....then.....the area opened up and before me was the Verdun Memorial to the fallen french.....
Hoy crap...is all I got...grave markers as far as the eye can see......and a big memorial at the top of the hill. Amazing and very well groomed and peaceful with the odd folks milling about.  I then saw the sign for Fort Douamont, off I went....and wow. It is one of thee main defending fortresses in the area and was ground zero for the frontline....it was held and lost to the Germans....in a rather bad way. Seems the French officers were complaining about how many mem were in these forts when they were needed on the lines....so they pulled out most of them....there were thousands in there....and left a small garrison the defend it with no orders. This place had been pounded to hell with the largest shells the Germans had and it looked it. Well one morning a group of german engineers snuck up..crawled in a hole and took all inside prisoner...without a shot....When word got out...Bell towers across Germany rang out.....it was that important.
It is something to see...it is probably on ground that was the most bombarded in history and it showed it...huge craters everywhere...but all grassy now. Not many folks around....so I went in and got an audio guide...cool...its an iPod geared to tour. you just walk around (had to follow the signs as it was easy to get lost) and tap the right audio file for the area you are in. I can keep this short...whoever lived in this hell hole...deserved a medal. Once the Germans took it....seems it was a mistake aas it was not meant to be defended the the front line at its back and the French were merciless....at one point they took all the bodies an put them into one of the chambers and just sealed it off and put a cross on the new wall. It is still there. At times I could only hear the loud echo of my boots walking through the hallways....creepy.....it was something to see....I ended up on the roof and saw the pop up turrets for the big guns....and the view....wow...i could see why they built it here. Sun was shining and I was sweating...needed some airflow so was time to go. On the way out I decided to stop in Verdun....for a Cafe au laut...found a nice patio and dicided on a huge beer instead....then a cafe...neat town...very European...lol. so I just people watched for a bit and decided it was time to go not sure I want to do th roads at night. I did see a shop I wanted to check out and see if they had a Zippo....they did but all plain ones...so I asked the guy in my best French if he had one ith Verdun on it....and boom...his headd started to shake back and forth non non non.....and his hands too...seems that is not a proper thing to do around here so I thanked him and headed to the bike.
Decided to go to Compiegne as it was almost to the Normandy coast and is just north of Paris...not going to Paris...do not want to deal with the traffic...even on a bike. I am sure getting to like this freedom....no one can hold you up and you travel at your own pace...people just pull over as you pull in behind...and no one....I say no one.....uses the left lane except to pass...OMG WHAT A CONCEPT!!!!! travelers tip...if you have a GPS go to SCDB.com before you go to europe...or any where for that matter...you can then download all the photo radar and speed radar sites as POI files. So I a pretty much know where they all are...England has one every ten feet...the French not so much...Apparently is illegal to do that in France...so they are called safety site notifications...turnabout is fair play lol. I need to pay attention though as they are in the weirdest places. I am sure a picture of me arse and the back of me helmet aree out there circulating already..  
I am a history nut....and was on me way and almost can not believe what I saw ....it was a park...Armistice park....this is where the train car was parked that was used to sign the Armistice to end WWI....had to go there. I was just of the highway I was on. No one was there.....it was very impressive....the train car is not there (Hilter used the same car for the French to surrender in WWII as an act of revenge then when it looked like he was going the lose the war he had it blown up). Sore loser.....
As I stood on the spot it was surreal...this is where history happened......the end of WWI....and sadly this was the start of WWII as thee armistice set the conditions for the inevitable act II of the War to end all wars. No there .... and it was so calm and quiet....time to find me hotel....and I did easy....
the hotel was along the channel and really cool with a restaurant right next door. Doesn't get better than that. So once I figured out how to get into the car park...then which elevator got me to my room....had to take two different ones.....and I commenced to upack...n unwind...in the restaurant....with a massive cold beer.....some amazing food....and then I found the Port...lil bit of staggering to find that dang elevator in the end......sleep came easy.