Upon leaving Paris, we picked up a rental car and drove to Northern France, to visit some of the World War I battlefields. We focused on the trenches around the Somme battlefields, since this is home to both the Canadian war memorial at Vimy Ridge and the Newfoundland memorial at Beaumont Hamel. In addition to their status as official memorials, both Vimy and Beaumont Hamel provide a vivid picture of how the trenches would have looked during battle. At Vimy, the trenches have been reconstructed with concrete "sandbags", while at Beaumont Hamel, they have been allowed to grow grassy green,

Like Rome, our visit to Paris felt far too short to take in everything the city has to offer — all the more so because we had a number of old friends now living in the city. In just five days and six nights, we were trying to cram in a month's worth of social visits and some of the world's most-visited tourist attractions and some time to just soak up the city and its atmosphere. We could have spent a month. In terms of attractions, we braved the crowds at the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre. For both, we