… and it said “Verdun”.
That’s another one of the places on my bucket list to visit before I go off to visit the hereafter, and there’s no time like the present so here I am.
But before we start, let me show you a photo of my room at the Papillon d’Or from last night and this morning. It’s a lovely room and a lovely place, and the breakfast was really nice too.
But the landlady clearly has a finely-developed sense of humour. There are two mattresses on the bed of course, and one (the one upon which I was sleeping) was thicker than the other.
And so in the middle of the night I rolled onto the other one, but it wasn’t where I expected and so I awoke in a panic, thinking that I was falling out of bed.
So by 06:00 I was wide awake and went for a shower as early as possible.
I had a slow recovery and by 09:30 I was on the road. And by 10:00 I was waiting in the queue at the IKEA on the border between Belgium and Luxembourg. It’s sale day today, there’s free coffee, and a €15:00 gift voucher for anyone spending more than €100 in the store. I need all kinds of new stuff for my new kitchen, wherever that might be, and so with some judicious purchases, I came out with €101:35 of new utensils, saucepans and the like.
But the most surprising thing of all this that I bought cost me €39:00 and I’ll post a photo of it in due course. Let’s just say that it will revolutionise my hotel-camping.
But the prize for one of the silliest signs ever must surely go to this one here.
It says, with absolutely no trace of irony “no spring-cleaning without a cup of tea”. However, as we all know, putting me with something light-coloured like this is a recipe for disaster.
The sign really ought to read “no cup of tea without spring-cleaning”. That’s much more like it where I am concerned.
I had a glance out of the fire escape window while I was wandering around. Over there is the border between Luxembourg and Belgium and there seems to be some kind of “incident” going on out there.
It looks like a fire to me, with all of that smoke.
And you’ll notice the weather. It’s foul out there with the rain pouring down like nobody’s business.
I had lunch and then I hit the road. Straight into a traffic queue that lasted for 7 kms. I despaired of this and took a detour out of the traffic, and that was when I picked up a sign for “Verdun”.
It’s a nice cheap hotel, the Hotel du Tigre (named after Georges Clemenceau, the French politician) and I’ve just had one of the best pizzas that I have ever eaten. And tomorrow I shall be off to visit the battlefields of Verdun. I’ve never been here before.
And Caliburn and Strawberry Moose have been able to cross off “Luxembourg” of their list of countries to visit.
Another milestone achieved for them.
