Here's Ed at Gare du Nord. We arrived over an hour early, thinking it was more like taking a plane, and had to watch our train move slowly up the departures board.
In Arras, we managed to find our way to the hotel on foot quite easily without a map. Arras is a beautiful town with the small town France vibe I remember from my last visit here.
We left our bags at the hotel and headed straight to the information centre and then to a café for a sandwich for lunch.
After lunch we headed for la Carrière Wellington in time for a 2pm tour. This museum is our main reason for visiting Arras. During the First World War my great-grandfather was here as part of the New Zealand Tunnelling company which was involved with constructing the tunnels between the existing quarries.
The museum was amazing with great projected images, commentary and poetry excerpts from the time.
The tunnels are located 20m below the ground and it was a cool 11 degrees.
After the tour we talked to the guide about my family connection. He was very interested and wanted us to wait for another guide to get back so we could talk to him. He suggested we walk up the road to the memorial to the NZ Tunnelling company but made us promise several times that we would return. The memorial has a map of New Zealand, a pick and the hat the tunnellers wore which was nicknamed the 'lemon squeezer' (affectionately) by the British Soldiers.
We returned as promised and spent a while talking to two other people from the museum. They didn't have any more information but were interested in seeing what I had. They invited us back for the 100th anniversary celebration in 2017.
We walked back to our hotel through the streets of Arras. Ed found a cat sitting in the window of a hairdressers.
For dinner we kept with the subterranean theme and ate at La Cave de l'Ecu which is in a cellar.
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