Beautiful Bastogne

Sorry, I suck. I totally brain farted on this post and I happened to look at my blog dashboard to see this one still sitting as a "draft". SHAME ON ME! I originally started writing this during Memorial Day weekend...

Anyway.. Bastogne....

Dad, Eric & myself headed on over to Bastogne (it's in Belgium) today since Dads been wanting to check it out. He's a huge War buff & loves history, so it's only fitting that he wanted to check out the place that had The Battle of the Bulge. We made it a point to get up early today since we wanted to make good time there...luckily, it's only MAYBE two-ish hours from my house! After some rough patches "here and there" between gas stations that decided not to take my spiffy Belgian bank card to gas stations not having restrooms, we finally made it to Bastogne.

Once we arrived, when you first make your way into town, you're greeted with an Allied Forces Sherman Tank Turret. Friendly, right? LOL. From there, we made our way over to the Bastogne Historical Museum.

Sadly, you're not allowed to take ANY pictures inside. I started having flashbacks of Saint Pauls Cathedral all over again!! Luckily, the prices were reasonable (around 9.50 euro a piece) and we also received information guides to listen to while we were walking around. Poor Dad was crawling the walls because he wanted to take pictures SOOOO bad due to all the historical stuff that was in there (a lot of it is similar to stuff he actually owns), so he was rather bitter about the camera rule, despite the educational experience that it was. 

Here's some pictures I managed to find online...apparently someone was able to get around the whole " no cameras" rule:

The sign that says, "BASTOGNE" is actually in a picture you can kinda see to the left of it. Three American soldiers were holding it up after the were able to fend off the German forces: 

Belgian refugee's being evacuated

 They even had a small documentary movie playing in a cinema within the building so you could get more of an idea as to what the soldiers dealt with during the war. Pretty interesting stuff! From there, we made our way out of the museum area and trolled around the souvenir store. I managed to find a mini stein, shot glass as well as a walking stick shield, patches and even a mini building of the Memorial that was across the way:



After inflicting some retail damage, we dropped all of our goodies off in the Xterra and made our way over to the Memorial:

Here's some info I was able to find online about the Memorial:

*The building of the Memorial*

"Some architects were approached for the building of the memorial and presented a scale model. In March 1947, the project of the architect Dedoyard is adopted.


The monument has the shape of a five-pointed star, each of the five branch measuring 31m in length and 12m in height. A circular gallery with columns, being 10m in diameter, surrounds the central part. The initial project planned the presence of a statue of a GI at each point of the star. The chosen materials are sandstone (stone of the area) and small granite.

The names of the American states are inscribed on the two sides of the ring and the badges of the units having fought during the Battle of the Bulge appear on the paving stones made of dressed stone.

The story of this battle is inscribed in golden letters on ten walls of the gallery, including the sentence which gives all its value to the symbol the Memorial of the Mardasson is: "Seldom has more American blood been split in the course of a single battle".

"The Belgian people remember their American liberators – 4th July 1946."

Eric & I sitting on the steps of the Monument

Here's a little video I took while on the top (it's a 360 view). Sorry it gets s lil shakey at the end! A bee came up and got in my face!