Taxi Verdun → Paris

The Verdun — Paris journey via the Eastern motorway is a voyage through French history, from the iconic city of World War I to the capital. Verdun, a millennia-old city on the banks of the Meuse, forever bears the scars of the 1916 battle — ten months of horror that claimed over 300,000 lives and turned wooded hills into a lunar landscape of craters. The battlefields around the city — the Douaumont Ossuary holding remains of 130,000 unidentified soldiers, Fort Vaux, the Bayonet Trench, the destroyed villages of Fleury and Haumont that were never rebuilt and bear the moving title of 'communes that died for France' — constitute the world's greatest World War I memorial. But Verdun is also the city of Braquier dragées, sugar-coated almond confections made since 1783 and exported worldwide for weddings and christenings. The journey to Paris then crosses the vast chalky Champagne plains, France's breadbasket, before skirting the Champagne vineyards near Reims and entering Île-de-France through the Marne valley, itself marked by the 1914 Battle of the Marne.