France - Arras & Champagne

We decided that the last Bank holiday of the year couldn't be spent in London so we jumped on the Eurostar over to Lille and then hired a car to drive down to Arras - the small town where I lived when I was in France in 1997. We spent Saturday touring the town, going down into the WWI tunnels that were built under the town square by NZ soldiers and visiting the war memorials. It was awesome to take Grant back to my old school and show him all of my old hang outs. On Saturday night we went to visit my host parents (Francoise and Stefan) who were blown away to see me after 10 years and to finally meet Grant after my constant talking about him when I lived with them. They speak little to no English and Grant speaks absolutely no French so it was very funny watching them try to break the language barrier! On Sunday, Francoise and Stefan took us to Vimy Ridge - where the Canadians conquered the Germans in WWI. The memorial is the most incredible memorial we have ever seen and it was very moving to wander the trenches and the war grounds. We had lunch at a French restaurant with Francoise and Stefan where Grant tried snails for the first time and then we headed south to Champagne for the night. Grant booked a night for us at a 14th century chateau in the Champagne region which is settled within 100 feet of a 12th century ruins castle. The settling was beautiful and we spent the afternoon watching a couple playing the bagpipes in the woods bordering the chateau and then wandered the ruins. We had a silver service three course dinner which was absolutely divine (it should have been for the cost as we found out when we checked out!) and sampled some awesome wines from the region. We headed back up to Lille the next day to train back to London.