By the time we had everything situated and hit the road it was nearly lunch time. Once we got out of the city, and waited in a ridiculously long toll queue, we stopped for lunch. At McDonald's of course. Isn't that where you are supposed to eat in France? Let's just say we were in a hurry. But they did have kiosk ordering, which was a huge relief. (Language barrier.) We got back on the road and continued our drive through a gorgeous autumn French countryside. It was so lovely. It was different than driving through the English countryside, because in England often the trees come right up to the motorway so you can't see beyond them, or there are tall hedges. In France there was so much farm land, and hills that you could see all around.
Despite good efforts, I think each generation beyond the generation most affected by the war, feels it less personally. Visiting these places with Gordon was a blessing because I can tell that the events of that day, and those years, mean more to him than they do to me. My one hope is that taking the kids to these places will increase the likelihood that they will value and reverence the tragedy that was WWII.
It took much longer than it should have to find a place to eat because we were trying to conserve Gordon's iPhone battery. We knew we would be literally lost without the iPhone. Which we were, later. But we found a tasty Italian place and I told Richard when we went in that I had a good feeling about it. Which turned out to be legit, the food was really good. But I did find myself wishing I had ordered what Richard ordered. (That seems to happen a lot...)
We didn't have any luck finding a place to buy an electrical adapter so we were once again trying to conserve iPhone battery. This meant that I made a bad judgment call as primary navigator to the driver, against the driver's better judgment, which resulted in a really long detour. And it was late and we were all tired. Thankfully no one heckled me about it and eventually we made it back to the hotel, safe and exhausted.