There was a Nazi concentration camp built just for women. Ravensbrück sits on the shore of a picturesque lake in northern Berlin, the beauty of the scenery belying the horror that once reigned there. Unlike other camps, Ravensbrück was not built specifically for Jewish prisoners. It was built to hold about 6,000 female prisoners …
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All you need to know before you go to the best château in the Loire Valley: A visit to France’s Loire Valley is truly incomplete without a visit to Château de Chenonceau. I was first attracted to the Loire Valley because of the Loire River, which served as the demarcation line in central France during WWII. …
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First, brace yourself. Visiting Oradour-sur-Glane today is not visiting a place; it is visiting a place in time. Oradour-sur-Glane is preserved to look exactly as it did after the smoke cleared on June 10, 1944, revealing the charred remains of a village as well as the remains of nearly all of its inhabitants. Once …
Just 45 minutes from Paris, Reims is a quiet but sparkling destination, boasting more than 250 kilometers of underground champagne cellars carved into its historic hills. With so many champagne houses to explore in the region, it was difficult to choose the best destinations for our group, but we narrowed it down to the …
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The first time that I visited Saint-Martin-le-Beau, a commune resting near the banks of the River Cher in central France, it was a cold evening in January and the rain slopped across my windshield as I navigated my rental car over the train tracks that run parallel to town. Because it was nighttime, I …
