France Has My Heart
There is a website called I Found a Quilted Heart. There you will find the story of how IFAQH was started by three sisters while vacationing in Nevada in 2014. The premise behind IFAQH is to leave quilted hearts in random places to bring joy to others who find them. I wanted to leave a piece of my heart on my trip to France and several weeks before leaving I made quilted hearts and tucked them into my suitcase.
Following is my story on where I left my hearts and I hope that they bring a little happiness to whoever finds them.
Tours is the gateway city of the Loire Valley in France and is a UNESCO world heritage site. This area is where we visited Amboise and Chateau Chenonceau, considered jewels of the Renaissance. This is also where the kings built magnificent buildings and beautiful gardens. Leonardo da Vinci spent the last three years of his life here, painting and drawing his visionary inspirations. We spent two nights here, and I left my first heart in this beautiful Loire Valley town of Tours.
From Tours, we traveled on to Brittany and experienced the wonder of Mont St. Michel and Saint-Malo. Saint-Malo is a seaport town situated on the English Channel. It is an old walled city joined to the mainland by an ancient causeway and by an avenue bridging the inner harbor. It was heavily bombed by the Allies in 1944 and has now become a popular tourist center with a ferry terminal serving the Channel Islands and other places. As we were walking around the area, I found a door and that’s where I left my second heart.
From Saint-Malo, we went on to Normandy. We visited the American Cemetery and walked on Omaha Beach but our first stop was Pointe du Hoc. Pointe du Hoc, a prominent position along the coast of Normandy, was a focal point of the amphibious assault by U.S. forces during the early morning hours of D-Day, 6 June 1944. The cliff top is located between Utah and Omaha Beaches and sits atop overhanging cliffs up to 100 feet in height.
The careful and thorough planning of the Normandy invasion determined that several key missions would require painstakingly accurate execution for the invasion to go as planned, and one of those missions was the capture of Pointe du Hoc.
As such, Allied planners named Pointe du Hoc one of the most dangerous German defensive positions on the Norman coast. If you enjoy history, you can read more about Rudder’s Rangers and the Boys of Pointe Du Hoc here.
I wanted to pay my respects to the rangers who scaled the cliffs, and I left my third heart here. I specifically made this heart red, white, and blue to represent our flag.
From Normandy, we bussed back to Paris to spend our last night and we had time to walk around the city, do some sightseeing, and have lunch. I went to the Galeries Lafayette Paris Haussman which is a popular tourist attraction and considered the best shopping mall in Paris. From the rooftop terrace, you can enjoy a panoramic view of Paris with the Eiffel Tower in the background. I felt this was the best place to leave my last heart as the next day I would be on Air France heading back to Atlanta. I took one last look at the beautiful city of Paris and hung my heart and said goodbye.
I loved the time I spent in France. There was an energy within the city and a quiet, tranquil, peacefulness in the countryside. It was like a hunger that wasn’t satisfied because there was so much more to experience. I hope someday to return.