Lorient - Sunday We Go To Lorient - France

Lulu pretty well has the rest of our tour penciled in.

After Lulu's convention in the Netherlands - we are vagabonding across Europe using Eurail Passes. They are deeply discounted first class train tickets that Americans must buy before they get to Europe. We are spending July 2 to 11 - on trains seeing things we have never seen before. Today it was Reims - tomorrow it is Lorient.

Lorient was my choice. It is on the Northwest Atlantic Coast of France. The Nazis build giant concrete pens for their Uboats there. Some consider them one of the wonders of the world. The roofs are 40 feet of poured concrete - the allies hit them with our best bombs and could not damage them. We eventually chose to burn the city and starve them out. This was one of the holdouts after the Nazis surrendered. 

The Nazis ruled over France from 1940 to 1945. I am surprised that the French have allowed these pens to survive - they are a glaring example of how the Nazis reigned over the French.

My grandfather - Roy Shartle Everhart - was killed by a Nazi Uboat - U575. It sailed out of Lorient. It sunk my grandfather's freighter (USS Norlandia) on July 4th 1942 - 73 years ago TODAY. U575 never made it back to Lorient - it was sunk 3 months later. 

Our train from Reims to Lorient takes over 6 hours. We did not want to go back through Paris but it is much quicker that way. Lulu got us a hotel on Priceline in Lorient for 56 euros. It is called Hotel Escale Oceania.