Re: Most exotic place you ever visited?
Author: DH
Date: 04-03-2010 - 14:48
Most "exotic" place I spent overnight on a railfan trip: the Caribou Hotel at Carcross YT in 1979. The hotel is right near the WP&Y tracks and rail service was still active to Whitehorse then. Hardly a luxurious place, but memorable.
I did have libations at the Baobab Hotel in Zimbabwe one evening while watching the steam-hauled mail train pass by at the foot of the hill the hotel sits on. This was in 1988. I did not stay at the hotel. Pretty neat sight to witness a passenger train with sleeping cars and Beyer-Garratt steam power pass by in the night.
My personal goal to the memory of a WW II vet (my father) is to see and ride over the Antheor Viaduct used by SNCF (French Railways) in Southern France. There in August 1944, my father commanded a group of LCVPs launched from an LST that landed near the viaduct in a narrow cove. It was one of the few places in Operation Anvil (or Dragoon) the Germans offered stiff resistance. I have vintage tourist postcards of the place and recent photos another railfan took of the viaduct.