55 at 55

I turned 55 this year.  That's an interesting number.  I began my driving career under the auspices of the gas-saving 55mph speed limit in the late 70s and through the 80s. I remember thinking I'd never be able to drive faster than 55 (legally). Luckily(?) that speed limit has been relegated to a part of American history.
2014 is an interesting year.  100 years ago WW1 started. To commemorate this we decided to have a historical holiday this year and visit some of the sites of the Great War.  This was taking a step into the past. To better appreciate the history we opted to take the backroads and avoid the faster highways allowing us to travel through the  different towns and villages at a pace a bit more appropriate for the epochs we were stepping back to. The speed limit on these roads are limited to 90kph, or around 55mph. 55 at 55-stepping back in my history as a first step to discovering a further past.
Our holiday began with a side trip to Paris and the Orly airport to take our intrepid traveller, Elise to her flight for Guadeloupe. Of course air travel, with all of the restrictions and early arrivals for check-ins always seems a bit stressful.

Getting behind this boat being towed didn't help the stress level.  There was no passing, and the cars and trucks coming from the other direction were obliged to get off of the road to let this behemoth pass.
Did I mention it rained all the way to Paris?

We managed to finally lose Noah's Ark at a roundabout and managed to arrive at the Orly airport on time.  Waking up Elise to find out which terminal she needed, she had no idea. She passed her documents up to her mom to figure out which one she needed, only to discover that her flight took off from Charles de Gaulle in the Northern part of Paris...yikes!  It might have been nice to have that information before leaving Bain-de-Bretagne.  Somehow this was our fault.  A panicked trip to CDG fighting the rain and the requisite Paris traffic allowed us to arrive just in time to stand in line waiting to check-in for her flight.  Thank goodness they told us to arrive 3 hours prior to her flight time and she had actually shared that information with us.

Finally heading in the direction of Verdun, we managed to  get terribly turned around trying to avoid the traffic jams.  Our GPS and paper maps, though historically accurate for 5 years ago, did little to help us navigate the newly constructed roundabouts and roads. Finally escaping Paris, we were on the road to Verdun.  I started to get a little worried about our planned itinerary. It seemed that Anne wanted to plan to see every historical site we passed on the way there. We finally arrived in Verdun around 9pm tired and happy to have beds waiting for us there.
We stayed at the Formule 1. If you think of it as camping, while sleeping in a real bed, you'll have an idea of what kind of hotel it is.

Let's get this party started!

The next morning our historical tour began in earnest.