Vimy

We left early this morning and good thing. We got lost on our way from Amiens to Vimy - a journey that should have taken about 1 to 1 1/2 hours took us about 2 1/2. We struggled getting out of Amiens and then into and out of Arras, when we should have been able to bypass Arras altogether. In any event, we had given ourselves plenty of time and arrived at Vimy by about 10:30.

Though we arrived in sunshine, within minutes it started to pour as we were half way around the Vimy Memorial. Such a beautiful monument. Very moving. I hope that our pictures do it justice. The landscape is spectacular and its clear why this location was so important for both sides to capture.

After visiting the monument we took a guided tour, again by a Canadian student, who was very informative. We were taken down into the subway system (the 8 meters underground tunnels that led from the front line back). Hard to imagine that people lived and operated in there. We came out of the subway (we were in the Grange Subway line) right into No Man's Land with the German trenches about 25 meters away. We were then able to explore the German trench system. Canada has done a great job restoring some of the actual trench systems so that you get a real sense of what it was like right on the front.