I was driven by anger that the HR VP cancelled my rail tickets and told me I have a company car and had to drive. Sweet revenge came a few days later.
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I think we will do the journey back through Germany. Or I would have said that except for…
Oh, FFS - so I need emissions zones stickers for three countries. Please for <deity>'s sake EU, sort this out.
Google suggests going via Reims and Metz is the quickest but not shortest route. Certainly the route is not set in stone, I’m more in the ideas generating stage at this point, nor is a stop-over in Reims - going that way anything from Arras to Metz is plausible as a stop over.
The conference starts Weds so I’m thinking an early but not stupid start from home (say 6ish) on Monday, should get us in Calais 12ish local time. A quick bite and we could be in Reims by 4 which might just give us time to stretch our legs and visit the Cathedral or the Fine Arts museum before an evening meal. Though as I lay out that timetable I’m already thinking whether Arras or Saint Quentin would be better placed for a stop over.
Obviously the further south I can get on Monday the more relaxed the driving will be on Tuesday.
I’m counting on it 
Did Nice to Calais in a day in a Fiat Uno which, it transpired, had just about non functional brakes and illegal tyres (and we’d taken it over the passes into Italy at the start of that trip as well).
Oh the joys of being in ones 20’s
You don’t get a Brussel LEZ sticker, the cameras recognise your registration plate.
If you go into CH and Austria, you can also have vignettes on your windscreen. Actually CH has started to do E-vingettes.
I guess the Nice to Calais trip you applied the brakes at Lyon and you came to a halt in Calais 
The cathedral at Reims is worth visiting and the one in Metz.
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The Place des Héros in Arras is quite scenic:
(although a lot of this had to be reconstructed after WW1 I believe since some German gentlemen had invalidated the insurance somewhat…)
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St Malo is the same - ostensibly 17th century but, in fact, rebuilt after WWII as it looked like this
after the Germans had left.
Yes, Dachau is worth a visit, but you need to go for the right reasons.
I have visited Dachau, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Ravensbrück, Breendonk and Bergen Belsen which my father was involved in the evacuation. No, I am not and I hate religion for the hatred it spreads, but I want to acknowledge atrocities it creates.
If you’re going from Calais towards Aachen or vice versa there is no need to go through Brussels, it’s better to head down through Mons. Both Antwerp and Brussels are well worth avoiding unless you like traffic jams.
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I think everyone should visit at least one concentration camp, or site of atrocity like Oradour - apart from those who think it perfectly acceptable to have their photo taken against the wall in the yard of block 11 at Auschwitz. I have been doing a form of pilgrimage around Europe over many years and have visited most of them, apart from Sachsenhausen. It is sobering.
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Yes you can go Lille, Mons, Namur, but Lille is certainly not immune from traffic jams and beware of cameras, personal experience, I lived in BE for 12-years.
I would go via Reims; yes it is boring but quicker and less prone to traffic queues.
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Indeed - and also the war cemeteries in Northern France, Belgium and Holland. Very moving.
And because I agree with the philosopher Santayana that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.
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Indeed.
I cannot talk when visiting the Menim Gate or Tyne Cot, the names of relatives appear at both, but it is not exclusively for that reason.
In my experience, it is the route with the least traffic, driving through Belgium and the Netherlands is slow (I’ve done both) and full of potential congestion, and then you’d still have to come down from Aachen through central Germany on not brilliant, and busy motorways.
Exactly this.
There’s always Verdun, just off the A4, about an 1 hour’s drive west from Metz (so, on your way), and full of WW1 history (if that’s your thing). Plenty of stuff to visit in the area - l’ossuaire de [Douaumont](https://l’ossuaire de douaumont), Maginot line forts, etc. Can be a bit macabre, so not to everyone’s tastes. I used to go to Verdun quite a lot, as I lived about 35 min south of there in a small town called Saint Mihiel (on the river Meuse).
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And using the A8 is better? Really?
I guess you have been north to Bastogne?
Going a bit further back, I used to live on the Battlefield of Waterloo. One day the dog dug up a rib bone; the paper work!
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I haven’t (yet)
My ex-M-i-L’s house was full of WW1 memorabilia, a marble headstone with an inscription for a dead officer had been turned into an outdoor table that we used when we ate outside, there was an old rifle in the attic, god knows how many shell casings turned into flower stands, and all sorts of ornaments, a carved cross for some other pour soul’s grave - it turns out that the house was occupied by the Germans as their Hauptquartier at one point during the war, hence all the leftovers. I’ve wandered in countless trenches and shell pits, seen a few “bois brulé”, it was a very strange and sobering experience. One thing that still sticks in my mind is the memorial to the American soldiers at the Butte de Montsec, an almost surreal Washingto DC-style memorial set on an outlying hill overlooking the plain and the Lac de la Madine below.
One of my friends with a similar vocabulary ordered a dry white wine and was surprised when she received three.
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Horses for courses, innit ? I learned to drive on the A8, the A1, and the A99, in and around Munich, and spent countless hours in traffic jams on my way to, and back from, France before the German government started the road improvement scheme. It has become much better than it used to be, even if it still has some big sticking points. Weekends can be bad, and so can holiday periods. Outside of those, our recent experience hasn’t been too bad. We often have the choice of going via Friedrichshafen to Lindau and up from the south-western corner, but that stretch along Lake Constance is pretty bad all the way into Friedrichshafen and out the other side until you hit the A96, so we always weigh up the pros and cons and check out the congestion maps before deciding which way to go (coming from the Auvergne in that particular case).
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You’ve reminded me of my Italian friend who ordered “three breakfast pancakes” in a Denny’s in Orlando - she was amazed to be brought three stacks of pancakes.
Similarly back when I used to be a smoker, I stopped at a gas station in North Carolina and asked for “twenty Marlboro Lights” - the cashier looked at me as if I was mad. 