Paul and Patt: Metz from Verdun, in the rain. AND French Restaurant review # 1 Chez Monique

Should have been a one hour ten minute trip, tops, even considering we opted to take back roads again eschewing the toll road. Took us four hours. FOUR hours. The road was in good condition, traffic light, rain light, scenery, just scenery like we have seen before (actually fewer towns).

Did start to pass monuments. So we stopped. I had to get out and read 'em. They were in German. I read even less German than I do French.

German monument — the Iron Cross on top helps too.

French if I remember right, but could have been German, there were a lot of German monuments along the road here. The dates were all either 1870 or 1871, so these were obviously commenting the Franco- Prussian War of that time. I remembered little of that war other than there was one.

As we left Verdun without breakfast we were looking for food and found it with help from our on-board magic Never Lost find near restaurant in Fresnes-en-Woevere. That's it, on the left side of the building — with the white door. Chez Monique

The place was crowded, a few of the customers spoke enough English to help us and all of us had a grand time. The guy to Patt's right did have fun and had a great personality. He had us greet an old guy who came in by name. It was well received by the whole place.

The ham and cheese sandwich was very good and a real - almost big cup of coffee good too.

Monique the Chez Monique on the sign outside was a little slow afoot and with the calculator, but enjoyed having us even if she at first thought we were German or Allemande. That is German in French. I corrected her.

Still raining when we left about an hour later. Actually bought a movie there - DVD of a movie about the town that the big guy in the photo produced or filmed/directed. The movie is set in the town and is about what happened in 1940 during the German occupation. Several of the people we were having coffee with were in the movie. They were pleased we bought one of the DVDs. I think they are selling slowly. I will enter it in a foreign film festival or something. We will watch it.

In Gravelotte, we stopped at a rather large new museum about the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. There were exhibits of material and uniforms left from combatants of the battles that were fought in the area. There were several monitors in the museum with movies about why the war was fought, the battles, the outcome, etc - very well done. This was a bitterly fought war between France and Germany as Germany was becoming more powerful and unifying as a nation.

German leadership saw the Alsace and Lorraine region of France as belonging to Germany and went to war with France to secure the region. France was not very strong as it was changing governments and though the armies fought fiercely with very high numbers of casualties, over the two years in a number of engagements, the Germans eventually won and occupied this part of France as German States until after World War 1.