France/Belgium - Day 1

After a late take-off (thanks to cargo loading issues and O'Hare choosing to change the take-off/landing directions), we landed at Charles de Gaulle airport about 40 minutes behind schedule. We managed to get thru Customs without peeing our pants and made our way to Europcar to pick up our rental. Sylvie was very nice and provided us with a Peugeot 2008 diesel. She perked up and smiled broadly when I identified the car by the lion on the key fob. We loaded up, plugged in the GPS and headed north on the A1. A few hours later, we were in Belgium and approaching Waterloo. Not wanting to pass up an opportunity to check out a historical location, we stopped to appreciate the ass kicking Wellington applied to Napoleon's backside.

This hill is a man-made memorial to provide a better view of the battleground. There are several undulations in the surrounding terrain and the entire scope of the battleground can only be appreciated from the top.

Here's a smaller scale overview of the entire area.

And, if you're fuzzy on the geographic layout of 1815 Europe, here's a refresher;

This spiral staircase, back to ground level, was really cool. You really can't see any of the battle site without paying some sort of entrance fee.

There were a LOT of stairs to climb to the top. This was one of those cases where you didn't look up, you just kept your head down and did one stair after another. I think we stopped a couple of times to catch our breath. We weren't the only ones that had to do that.

At the top:

More maps to let you know who was where. The scope of the battle site was impressive, to say the least. I reminded me a little of Gettysburg, in that respect.

This is looking west towards the little town of Waterloo. From here you can easily pick out the house that Welling used as his headquarters.

Photo proof that we climbed all those stairs.

While we were approaching the 'hill', we could hear what could only could be described as cannon fire. It was beyond a ridge so we couldn't see the cannon but we could sure hear it and, eventually, smell it. Sure enough, there was some sort of re-enactment going on. We could see a little from the 'hill' top but those folks were still far enough away that it was difficult to make things out. On our way out, we encountered a group of them. They were kind enough to pause for a picture.

With light quickly fading, and stomachs growling, we jumped into the car and headed into Brussels.