Today was another travelling day. I'll be happy to go back to living out of my suitcase again! We said goodbye to our Auberge home, took pictures of it, and then were on our way. First stop, Vimy Ridge.
Vimy is so much more impressive and huge than I ever thought it would be! The monument is huge! And it was surrounded by huge craters and green grass and peaceful trees. And sheep of course. I liked the crying mother statue a lot. It was impressive. Shannon and I rubbed the two students from red deer on the monument, they turned out really well.
We had a ceremony, the biggest one we had, where Megan Djed, as she put it, opening and closing the ceremony, Alex and Lauren read prayers they had written, Laurel recited Flanders Field again, Matt talked about cadets and his willingness to fight for his country, as well as layed the wreath, and Melissa read a poem she had written. Then Shauna and Murray sang Amazing Grace, and I cried. It was all just so moving.
We went and visited the visiting centre, with more information inside, and we got postcards. Then our tour guide shut down the centre just so we could have a guided tour of the underground communication lines. Those were so cool. At one point, there was a warhead underground, just sitting there, that apparently fell through part of the tunnel they were building. It was defective [good thing] and it's still there today. We saw above ground the distance between the Canadian and German lines, and it was no more than a football field distance, I don't even think it was that far apart. Needless to say, Leah also got a scarf.
We went to the cemetary, well half of us went to the small one, while the other half went to the really big one. Shannon and I went to the small one because Harold Muldrew's grave was in there. We got another rubbing. We didn't get to see the more impressive huge cemetary, oh darn.
Our next cemetary [and last!] visit was different. It was to a German cemetary, and it was huge. Every cross was for four soldiers, and their names were on the crosses. I don't think that that meant that they were in the cemetary, I think that they were just markers because they didn't bother putting all the bodies in there. They were probably all in Germany anyhow. I mean, it was France land. Their crosses were black iron, that was different, and the Jewish stones were stone, and not crosses. Even with one cross representing four people, there were a lot of crosses.
After stopping for lunch, we were on our way to Paris! Jerome drove us in, and even drove us around L'Arc de Triomphe! That was an interesting traffic circle. Scary. On the way in, we saw le Sacre-Coeur, and Montmartre, obviously, and the Eiffel Tower [the top was there!], and les Champs- d'Elysees. Very cool. We arrived at our Auberge, and it's a block [not even] from la Seine, and Notre Dame! We all said goodbye to Jerome, and thanked him for driving us around. He got a scarf... We got in our Auberge, and our new room is 27. We have Sarah and Meagan again in our room. Again, we were cursed and got the smallest room. I nearly died when I saw the guy's room. For seven people, they had a huge room, and a loft! Their room had a table and a counter and a balcony and room.. grrr. The loft was the coolest part. I wish we had that room, but it's not like we used our room a lot. We dumped all of our stuff in our room, then headed back downstairs.
We headed over to the other Auberge, where we would be eating supper every night. After supper, we all travelled down to the metro station and just took that up and down, just for practise. Then we went sight seeing! The first stop was the Obelisque thing Louis brought back from Egypt. That was cool. Then we wandered down the Champs Elysees to L'Arc de Triomphe, then wandered back along la Seine. It was a great first night.
