Memorial Day

I took a sigh of relief as I started writing this post. It’s the last in the trip to Paris series. Hooray!

Monday morning we didn’t do any exploring. We just got up and checked out as quickly as we could. Once we got out of Paris traffic, we started to relax, and I opened up the can of European-style Dr. Pepper we bought earlier in the weekend. It was not nearly as good as American Dr. Pepper. I couldn’t quite place it, but I think the European one had hints of black cherry and grape soda. Eeee.

We made one significant stop on the way home. Since it was Memorial Day and all, we decided to stop at the Lorraine American Cemetery near St. Avold, France (close to the German border). Here’s what one website has to say about it:

“The Lorraine American Cemetery and Memorial in France covers 113.5 acres and contains the largest number of graves of our military dead of World War II in Europe, a total of 10,489. Their headstones are arranged in nine plots in a generally elliptical design extending over the beautiful rolling terrain of eastern Lorraine and culminating in a prominent overlook feature. Most of the dead here were killed while driving the German forces from the fortress city of Metz toward the Siegfried Line and the Rhine River. Initially, there were over 16,000 Americans interred in the St. Avold region, mostly from the U.S. Seventh Army’s Infantry and Armored Divisions and its Cavalry Groups. St. Avold served as a vital communications center for the vast network of enemy defenses guarding the western border of the Third Reich.”

I had never been to a military cemetery before. It was really sad to see all the buried soldiers who died defending the US. Photos are below (currently the embedding thing is having issues. You can also see the photos by clicking here if they don’t appear below):

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– Sarah