This was a quick trip and we drove Sunday morning to a small town in France called Amiens, about 4 hours from our house. It is most famous for its cathedral, which is the largest in France. The building was indeed spectacular. Kira wants to return on June 24th to visit. The cathedral was built after John the Baptist’s head was given to the region in 1209. Every year on Saint John the Baptist Day, they bring out the head on a platter for all to see. It that cool or what? (OK, so it’s weird!). No pictures of the head, so don’t race through this looking for one! We did see a picture (it was actually just the face, and it was rather gruesome. I don’t know what happened to the rest of the head or the body for that matter).
There is nothing much else to Amiens from what we could see. It looks like a very depressed town. Much of the town is built of a white cinder block construction and this looks dismal when dirty and, having a grey sky made it even more depressing. Only a few shops were open Sunday and even many of the restaurants appeared to be closed. Our guide book suggested one of two places; a local and an exotic. The local was closed so we opted for the other, a Tex Mex place in the middle of nowhere. I don’t think I’ve ever had a chicken burrito served with Velveeta cheese melted on top and served with French fries on the side. The beer was good though.
We went looking for breakfast on Monday morning, and again nothing was open, even at 10:00 a.m. We ended up in a little bakery eating croissant type stuff. They didn’t have coffee. We even went to the tourist office, staffed by 5 people, all sitting around talking, and couldn’t get a recommendation for a place to eat at 11:00 am on Monday. Very weird. I know why Starbucks is doing well in France. I only wish they had one in Amiens. As an aside, Starbucks opened last year in Cologne, a nearby city to Bonn. However, as Dianne found out on her first visit there at 7:30 a.m. before a meeting that the place doesn’t open until 9:00. How weird is that!
We all laughed at our ability to completely destroy the French language. For some reason, the couple hundred German words I know keep popping into my head at the most inopportune time. I have no idea how people can manage to speak 3 or 4 languages without mixing them all up. Needless to say, we servived.
Amiens was also near the front lines during the First World War and there are war memorials and grave yards everywhere around. Even the church had several plaques thanking the various Allied troops for helping to defend the church and the town.
We went to visit a famous WW1 battleground at Vimy Ridge, about 20 minutes from Amiens. This was the Germans most heavily fortified hill on the front, which extended down from Belgium to Switzerland. The two sides were stalemated for several years, when the Canadians were given the task to take the hill. The battle was characterized as one of the greatest of the war, in which the Canadians stormed up the hill and took possession of the field.
We walked around some of the trenches. It was amazing that the two sides were literally 100 feet apart. During the summer months you can also go down into some of the tunnels, where they would dig to the other side and set large explosives under the enemy. They will also give personal tours for all Canadians. We also saw one of the grave yards, the huge monument built on the hill to honor all the Canadians lost in the war, and a little museum with pictures and small video clips. Most of the graves were marked only as “Known Only Unto God” as their names were not known. The monument has inscribed the names of all the thousands of Canadians missing and presumed dead during the War. The battleground is filled with huge craters and there are still thousands of unexploded shells around. Don’t leave the designated walking areas! It was very impressive.
A link is included for those Canadians in the e-mail. http://pages.interlog.com/~fatjack/vimybattle.htm
As Dianne says, it definitely makes one proud to be (or have been) Canadian after visiting.
Anyway, if it’s Tuesday, Dianne must be in Moscow! It’s back to daily life.
Tom, Dianne, Kira, Conner
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