A sunny and casually cultural day in Paris.

We're both feeling well today, however we decided to spend

the morning catching up with a few domestic duties 

(washing and ironing mostly) and made quite a few 

skype calls home. We went to the supermarket and stocked up on

 fruit, salad items and also found some chicken noodle soup!

I know Andrew is feeling much better because we also

bought bacon and eggs.

After lunch we went for a walk around the local area

and worked out where two of the local metro stations are.

We also found this amazing arch just around the corner...

We've spent the afternoon working out which days we're going

to do visit places and purchased tickets online.

Ever since we arrived here, at intervals, we've been hearing 
beautiful music, a piano and singing floating in through our open
 windows. There is a window at a right angle to ours and at times

we can see a person playing the piano with a singer

beside them...we've heard quite a few Beatles song.

Our theory is that a music/singing teacher lives next door.

The student we gave the best score sang 
'The Long and Winding Road'.

Another theory we have is that the owner of the apartment is a

fan of the American photographer Richard Avedon (1923-2004).

A long time ago we saw a documentary about him that explored

his iconic portrait making practice. At the heart of his artistic work

was a profound concern with the emotional and social freedom

of the individual in society. There are three large

portraits around the place including this one in the toilet!

A certain someone at home (who is very much like his father)

will see that I have accepted his challenge of including a

toilet photo in todays blog!

James Kimberlin, drifter

State Road 18, Hobbs, New Mexico, 10/7/80

It probably won't surprise you to hear that I did some research

and found that all three portraits are from his book

'In The Amercian West: Richard Avedon 1979 -1978'.

It's a collection of photographs taken over a five ear period in,

as the title suggests – the American West.

With a couple of assistants, a view camera and a tripod,

Avedon roamed theWestern States,

avoiding the cities, searching for people willing

to have their portraits taken. He stopped at carnivals and oil fields,

coal mines, ranches and slaughterhouses. He chose men and

women who work at hard, uncelebrated jobs, the people who

are often, ignored or overlooked.

In each setting Avedon persuaded people to stand without

rehearsal, in shade or beneath an even overcast, before a white sheet

of paper that makes every picture look like a studio shot.

Today we haven't walked enough k's to mention,

tomorrow will be another story.

Paris

This morning we drove 134 k's from Reims to Charles De Gaulle 
Airport, Paris where we dropped off the hire car 
and caught the train (about 1/2 an hour) to Paris.

We found our apartment without any problems and

were warmly greeted by Fleur, the housekeeper.

After showing us where everything is and giving us some tips

about places to see, she left us with her phone number

and said to call her if we need any assistance during our stay.

We're very impressed with the apartment,

it was described on Airbnb as an old photo studio

recently converted into a 50m2 apartment,

on the 2nd floor. There is a lift. The apartment has high ceilings,

a separate bedroom with a large double bed (200X160).

The bathroom has a walk-in shower.

The kitchen is fully equipped with dishwasher, microwave, grill

and induction hob. It is in a quiet place,

in a private lane 'La Cité Paradis'.

You will also find many local shops (including bakery, grocery)

It's more spacious than we imagined,

and will be a great base for our six nights in Paris.

We've both been 'off colour' over the last few days

and have put it down to food poisoning due 

to some chicken we both ate on Monday.

I had a bad night on Monday and Andrew started

to feel all hot and clammy on the train today.

He has not been well this afternoon and we're

hoping that he'll feel much better in the morning.

The Airbnb photos don't do it justice, however because

the resident photographer is out of action at the moment,

I'll add them anyway.

From the road our private street has a gate,

you need a pass card to open the boom gate 
and drive in during the day.

 From 9pm each night the big gates are closed until 7am.

Again you need the pass card to come in and out.

There is then a 5 digit passcode to come into the building

and another to enter the foyer where the lift is.

We feel quite safe and secure here.

 Our street, the apartment is the very last one 

down the far end on the left hand side.

The gates open onto Rue d'Hauteville.

We only walked 5.2 k's today!

A fun fact to finish off with...

Quite a few Australian TV shows are aired here,

we've seen Bondi Vet, Border Patrol, Home & Away 

and even My Kitchen Rules!

Reims

Badly damaged during the WW1 when 80% of the town's buildings

were destroyed, Reims was spared during WW2.

The capitulation of the German forces on 7 May, 1945

was signed in Reims where General Eisenhower had his headquarters.

The Carnegie Library of Reims was built with money donated by businessman and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie to the city

of Reims after WW1. Built in the 1920s, the Art Deco decor

of the Carnegie Library, the harmony of its proportions,

the elegance of its architecture made it worthy of inclusion in

the French inventory of Monuments Historiques.

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Today the production of Champagne

remains one of the town's main activities.

This building was constructed by Champagne House

G.H.Mumm. The entrance suggests a gigantic wine barrel

and a frieze entirely composed of enamel mosaic tiles,

illustrates in detail all the steps of producing champagne.

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Notre-Dame Cathedral of Reims is

a Gothic art masterpiece, where, over the course of a millennium

(816 to 1825), twenty five kings chose the cathedral

as their coronation cathedral.

On July 17, 1429 when Charles VII was crowned King of France

in the Cathedral of Reims. Joan of Arc attended the ceremony.

It boasts exceptional statuary,

my particular favourite is the smiling angel.

The windows of Marc Chagall.

In 1974, Marc Chagall (1887-1985) created,

with the collaboration of the Jacques Simon Workshop,

three stained glass windows for the axial chapel of the Cathedral.

The city's artistic tradition is also maintained by the famous

stained-glass workshops which once employed the talents of

Villon, Ghagall, Braque and Da Silva.

I was disappointed to find that the workshops

are not open for visits.

Joan of Arc in the gardens outside the cathedral.

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Gallo-Roman Cryptoprticus

Built circa 200A.D. These partially buried galleries

located beneath the Gallo-Roman forum were once to store grain.

Only the eastern gallery has remained, but it is among the few

cryptoprticus of the Roman world to have been excavated.

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From the window of our hotel room we can see

the Fountaine Sube where a winged

Victory rises at the summit holding in her hand

a crown of laurels. She dominates

Place Drouet d'Erlon, named after one of Napoleon's

generals. It's lined with boutiques, bookstores,

a cinema, cafes, restaurants and bars.

Today we walked 9.8k's

Vimy Ridge

This morning we drove 260k's from Ypres in Belgium

to Reims in France.

We stopped along the way at to visit the memorial at Vimy Ridge.

The Canadian Corps were ordered to seize Vimy Ridge in April 1917.

Situated in northern France, the heavily-fortified seven-kilometre

ridge held a commanding view over the Allied lines.

To capture this difficult position, the Canadians

carefully planned and rehearsed their attack.

Attacking together for the first time, the four Canadian divisions

stormed the ridge at 5:30am on 9 April 1917.

Three days of costly battle delivered final victory.

The Canadian operation was an important success.

But it was victory at a heavy cost:

3,598 Canadians were killed and another 7,000 wounded.

The capture of Vimy was more than just an important battlefield victory.

For the first time all four Canadian divisions attacked together:

men from all regions of Canada were present at the battle.

Brigadier-General A.E. Ross declared after the war,

“in those few minutes I witnessed the birth of a nation.”

Vimy became a symbol for the sacrifice of the young Dominion.

In 1922, the French government ceded to Canada

in perpetuity Vimy Ridge, and the land surrounding it.

The gleaming white marble and haunting sculptures

of the Vimy Memorial, unveiled in 1936,

stand as a terrible and poignant reminder of the 11,285

Canadian soldiers killed in France who have no known graves.

Canada’s impressive tribute to those Canadians

who fought and gave their lives in the First World War

is majestic, inspiring and overlooks the Douai Plain

from the highest point of Vimy Ridge.

The Memorial took eleven years to build.

Its towering pylons and sculptured figures contain almost

6,000 tonnes of limestone brought to the site

from an abandoned Roman quarry on the Adriatic Sea

(in present day Croatia).

Twenty sculpted, symbolic figures grace the monument,

each carved where they now stand from huge blocks of limestone.

The largest, a mourning figure known as Canada Bereft,

was carved from a single 30-tonne block.

Head bowed in sorrow, she provides a powerful representation

of Canada, a young nation grieving her dead.

Overlooking the Douai Plain, she gazes down upon a symbolic tomb

draped in laurel branches and bearing a helmet and sword.

Carved on the walls of the monument are the names

of 11,285 Canadian soldiers who were killed in France

and whose final resting place was then unknown.

The twin white pylons, one bearing the maple leaves of Canada,

the other the fleur-de-lys of France,

symbolise the sacrifices of both countries.

At the top are figures representing Peace and Justice;

below them on the back of the pylons are the figures

representing Truth and Knowledge.

At the base of the sculpture is a young dying soldier,

the spirit of sacrifice,

and the torch bearer is a reference to

the lines in John McCrae's poem

'To you from failing hands we throw

The torch, be yours to hold in high'

At the base of the Memorial,
 these words appear in French and in English:

TO THE VALOUR OF THEIR COUNTRYMEN IN THE GREAT WAR

AND IN MEMORY OF THEIR SIXTY THOUSAND DEAD T

HIS MONUMENT IS RAISED BY THE PEOPLE OF CANADA.

Nearby a state-of-the-art Canadian Visitors Centre

opened in April this year. We were very impressed

by the exhibits.

You can also visit a section of trenches and tunnels

that have been reconstructed in the same positions

 as the original Canadian and

 German outpost lines of 1917. At some points,

the opposing trenches were only 25 metres apart.

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We arrived in Reims this afternoon. 
It's the unofficial capital of the Champagne

 wine-growing region, and many of the well-known 
champagne houses are headquartered here.

We settled into our hotel, it has a beautiful art deco exterior 
but it goes downhill from there! 
Only three people can fit into the lift at once...
and even that would be very cosy. 
Our room is PURPLE and I really mean PURPLE!

We're only here for 2 nights and it will be fine.

It didn't take long before I was sampling
 a glass of Veuve Clicquot.

Today we walked 12.9 k's

Polygon Wood

Our second tour took us to...

Hill 60

The high ground of Hill 60 was created in the 1850s

by spoil dumped from the cutting for a railway line.

On the west side, a long irregular mound atop the ridge was called

The Caterpillar and on the east side of the cutting,

at the highest point of the ridge,

was the mound known as Hill 60,

about 60 feet (18m) above sea level,

from which First World War artillery observers

had an excellent view of the ground around Zillebeke and Ypres.

Artillery-fire and mine explosions during the war

changed the shape of the hill and flattened it considerably.

Today the peak of Hill 60 is only about 4 metres higher than the vicinity.

The distance between the German and British front line

was alarmingly close...

Andrew stood here and took the photo below,

I'm in the centre of the photo standing on the British Front Line.

Today it is a quiet and tranquil place.

The bodies of many soldiers still lie undiscovered in this area. 
It has never been cleared.

Apparently there is a huge discrepancy between the number

of soldiers known to have died on the battlefields

and the number of bodies recovered.

We walked to the other side of the railway line to the

Caterpillar Crater where 70,000 pounds of explosives

blew a crater with a diameter of 380 ft across the top.

It was detonated by the 1st Australian Tunnelling Company.

This memorial honours their sacrifice.

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Andrew's paternal grandfather served with the Australian Army

for just over 2 years in France and Belgium.

During this time he was gassed and also suffered gunshot wounds.

He was hospitalised on each of these occasions

and then returned to the field of battle.

On September 26^th, at the Battle of Polygon Wood

his actions resulted in him being awarded a

Distinguished Conduct Medal.

Andrew was 17 when his grandfather passed away,

he remembers him well.

The family knew that he had served and been awarded

a medal but he never spoke of his experiences during the war.

It wasn't until after his death that the family discovered

that he had been wounded during the war.

We're beginning to understand why these men

didn't want to talk about what happened here.

Today Polygon Wood and indeed all the battlefields

we've visited seem to be places of peace, tranquility and respect.

Our guide personalised this part of the tour for us and spoke
about Andrew's grandfather.

It was very moving to stand in Polygon Wood
and hear about his part in the battle. 

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Our final stop on the tour Hooge Crater Trenches.

A large crater was blown at Hooge in July 1915.

This occurred during a time of relative quiet

on the British part of the Western Front,

when few major assaults were made.

The crater (now water-filled) is quite large, and there are also pillboxes around it, one of which you can enter, it was an interesting experience.

There is a suggested route to follow in the grounds, and around the back of the crater are some shallow trenches; it's not clear if these are original or recreated. Our guide told us that using a GPS trench map navigation system, they do seem to line up quite well with wartime trenches.

Today we walked 6.4 k's