A Day Trip to Amiens

After my recent Rouen trip, I decided it was time to start exploring other little towns in France. When Lillian mentioned she had been wanting to see Amiens, and I found train tickets for 10E each way, we decided to make a girls' day trip out of it. To top it off, there was a Christmas market and a light show on the cathedral while we were there.

We hopped on the train around noon and arrived in Amiens just a little over an hour later. We spent the afternoon wandering the Christmas market and town. This was a pretty large Christmas market, but unfortunately, it was a bit commercial, like most in Paris. We still had fun stopping at different booths to play puzzles, enjoy some hot chocolate, and enjoy some Canadian delicacies--our favorite booth. By far, our favorite activity of the Christmas market, was the "Santa Wonderland" area set up in front of Hotel de Ville. We discovered an interactive video screen that dressed us up in holiday costumes, like elves, reindeer, and Santa. It wasn't the highest quality technology, and we never did receive our e-mails with our captured photos, but we had a blast laughing and attempting to take several photos. We definitely gathered quite a crowd watching us make fools of ourselves.

The cathedral of Amiens is another Notre Dame, and in fact the tallest of any in France. It is a pretty impressive church with lots of stained glass, as usual. It also has the largest interior space of any cathedral in France.

Although it never rained the entire day, it was quite cold, so we took several breaks warming our cold selves in cafes and restaurants. Of course, because it was a week day in off season in small town France, this proved difficult, as most things are closed between lunch and dinner for the afternoon. This gave us a chance to wander some of the quaint, charming canals of Amiens. How adorable!

Our final activity before catching the train back to Paris was the 7pm light show on the front of the cathedral. In an impressive use of lights and lasers, the cathedral is transformed into the original colors of the cathedral when it was built. It was pretty impressive and amazing to think that all of the Notre Dames were once colored like this, rather than their white stone colors of today.

All in all, a pretty successful day trip, even if it was a cold one. Hopefully we can sneak in a few more of these trips in the next few months! :)