Pictures here: Vimy, Paris part 2
Today was a very long and exciting day - we started with a ride on the TGV to Arras - about an hour north of Paris. We spent a couple of hours just exploring the town... beautiful place, and it was so full of history. Yet another enormous cathedral. This one we were two of maybe four people inside, so it was nearly silent... it was a wonderful change from the constant hustle and noise of Paris. After a bit of hunting, we found the meeting place for our bus to the Canadian Memorial at Vimy Ridge - in the process we met up with a few more Canadians - it was nice being able to chat with some folks from back home. One fellow, Leif, was from the Yukon and had come over to visit some cousins in Denmark (go figure!) He had some great stories to tell from back home and over here - one in particular about being charged by a moose had Tim and I laughing pretty hard.
So, after about a half-hour bus ride, we arrived at the memorial where we were given a tour of a section of the communications tunnels, dug in chalk approximately 8 m beneath the surface - very cool. After the tour was done, we had about an hour to make our way to the actual monument of the memorial. It was huge, beautiful, and sad.
Once we were finished there, we returned to Arras, and the train station for our ride back to Paris - for some reason the train was delayed by about 15 minutes enroute - something about passing a EuroStar train or something... not really sure. The station was jam-packed with people when we arrived because of a power failure on the TGV rails - I'm glad it didn't effect us!
Next we headed off to the Eiffel Tower. Last time we were here we didn't go up. We've regretted it ever since, so this time, despite being exhausted, we climbed the stairs up to the second level. What a view! Totally worth the near-heart attack from the 700 stairs...
And then we came back here. Turkey just won their world cup game, and I can hear people outside cheering and honking car horns... lovely stuff! But I must go now, I need to pack before we leave tomorrow morning for Munich.
Stay well folks!
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