Day 13: Wednesday 9 April 2014

Now first up I am experiencing difficulty loading photos onto the blog, Google in its infinite wisdom has decided I am trying to load photos to something called "the circle" and is jamming up somewhere.  You can rest assured that the IT department is hard at work trying to correct the problem.  In the meantime you will have to make do with my pithy prose and delightful word pictures. 


Checked out of the Mecure in Amiens and did a bit of shopping, visited the cathedral and drove the 80 or so kilometers to the town of Saint Quentin.  Saint Quentin is where I am basing myself for the Hindenberg Line part of the trip.  The breaching of the German Hindenberg line by the allies was one of the last great battles of TGW.  As usual the 5 divisions of the AIF played a major role in this action. 

 

Its funny sometimes how first impressions can be wrong.  I was driving into Saint Quentin today and as usual the GPS was taking me through the commercial/industrial part of town and then through what appeared to be some poorer residential areas and I was thinking what the heck am I doing here.  Then I arrived at the Ibis hotel, where I am staying, right in the middle of town, opposite the municipal car park and with a major bus depot out the front, and I thought "this is getting worse".  Anyway after checking in I walked around the corner from the hotel and lo & behold there was a huge civic square with gracious buildings and bars and restaurants by the bucket load.  So there, god was back in his heaven and everything was right with the world.

Town square - St Quentin

I had lunch in one of the restaurants and dinner in another.  Lunch was beer and a burger, some French burgers are unusual in that the meat isn't minced it is more like chopped and is quite coarse.  I asked for medium and medium is what I got.

Dinner at another restaurant on the square bought back some fond memories.  Amongst other things I had a dish comprising of various cuts of pork, a mountain of sauerkraut and boiled potatoes all washed down with a pitcher of Alsace Riesling.  Very evocative of some of the meals myself and Flashy had in Strasboug a couple of years ago.

One thing I did see on the menu in the restaurants here is a "Girafe of Beer".  It is a long cylindrical container that sits on a vertically base with a tap on it and it holds 2.5 litres of beer!  A girafe of Becks would set you back 32 euros.  I haven't seen anybody drinking from one yet, maybe Friday night when people are celebrating the end of the week.

View from my hotel window

Ibis hotel - St Quentin

I had a look around the town and did some planning for my attack on the Hindenberg Line tomorrow over a couple of beers in the hotel bar.


Can somebody tell me why hotel bars are lifeless, lacking character and nobody drinks in them, (apart from me)?