Traveling home
The day was long, and everyone was exhausted.
When we left the hotel today for our World War II tour of Paris, we had to leave through the back door because there was a helicopter with repair supplies blockading the front. That would normally be completely illegal, but today was an exception. I had already seen my friend eat an entire plate of bacon and baguettes, and I had downed about seven plates of various petit-déjeuner myself. It was an unexpected kind of day, and the sun, which later surprisingly transformed into rain clouds, shone down on us as we set out.
With the Eiffel Tower ahead of us and the hotel behind, we followed our tour guide, Valerie, to the first location. We later learned she had acting experience from a time when she played a Pilgrim for a Mayflower play in Plymouth. It showed. There was never a dull moment.
First, we visited the memorial garden for the children of the Velodrome d’Hiver, which commemorated 4,115 children who were rounded up and sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1942. The roundup was the largest French deportation of Jews during the Holocaust, taking place in Paris on July 16-17, 1942. The pictures and flowers carefully placed around the garden gently adorned Valerie’s words as she told us of the atrocity. We were learning about the mass deportation for the first time, and our hearts cried for the children.
The places we visited next relied on pomp and grandeur to illustrate the arrival of the German Army in Paris. We saw the Hotel Crillon and the Hotel de la Marine at the Place de Concorde, where the German high command and Navy stayed during Paris’ occupation. Further along, we saw a bronze Charles de Gaulle, a French army officer and statesman who led Free France against Nazi Germany in World War II, marching along the Champs-Elysees like he never left.
At the end of our day, we all walked a lot, learned a lot, and brimmed with an appreciation for our tour guide. Valerie glowed with ardent respect for every little nugget of history she shared, which meant she was glowing the whole time. We hung on her every word, which meant we couldn’t help but glow with her.
Merci Valerie, merci Paris, et merci Charles de Gaulle!