Picardy, France

After a long drive and a stop over in a charming little town in The Netherlands our first stop in France was the flemish town of Arras. A pretty small town with flemish architecture and a large cathedral. Unfortunately the weather was getting very wet, so we stepped in to a small bistro full of locals, Chez Georget on Place de Héros.

Just outside Arras we visited the Canadian “Vimy Ridge Memorial” a small Canadian WW1 museum with trenches from both the allied and the Germans. We also took a guided tour through the tunnels dug under the battlefield.
The ground throughout the area was scarred with craters from shells and massive ones from deep tunnel fighting, a technique where you dug under the enemies tunnels and planted explosives, collapsing the area where both your own and the enemies tunnels were.

We ended the first day in the lovely town of Amiens on the Somme river. This was our stop for the next few days.
Amiens is a small town of around 130.000 inhabitants and with one of the largest cathedrals in France.

We went for a stroll through the old St. Leu Quartier, with narrow townhouses next to the river, and took a boat trip to the “Hortillonnages” which is a 300 hectare area on the river with floating gardens that has been around since ancient times. Even though the guide only spoke french, we managed to get some out of the tour and enjoyed the lovely gardens and small houses built in the gardens. There also was a lot of birds in the area which I liked 🙂

We ended our stop in Amiens with a visit to nice restaurant Restaurant Osmoz where I had a big plate of Boeuf Tartare (the french people do like their meat). We also enjoyed the big light show at the cathedral at night where the light up the building in al kinds of colors.