Day 1: Arras for 3 nights

1^st class train tickets from Paris to Arras

Departure: 1:08PM; Arrival 1:56PM

1 double deluxe room, breakfast and taxes included at Najeti Hôtel de L’univers****
Hotel De L’univers is located a short walk from the Grand Place in the historic town of Arras. Guests can enjoy the hotel’s gourmet restaurant and relax in the bar.

Hotel De L’univers has en suite guestrooms with TV and Wi-Fi available.

The Hotel De L’univers’ restaurant serves local dishes and seasonal specialties.

Guests of this hotel can visit the Beffroi d’Arras and Fine Arts Museum nearby. Arras train station with TGV connections is just 1,641 feet away.

http://www.univers.najeti.fr/

Day 2:

Artois/Somme Private Tour

• Maison Blanche German Military Cemetery – Neuville Saint Vaast: Largest German Military Cemetery in France. An in-dication of the intensity of the battles and the losses sustained just North of Arras.
• Vimy Ridge: the most important Canadian memorial on the Western Front. Canadians actions here proved essential and were extremely successful. A true breakthrough in strategy and preparation which led to the cap-ture of this ridge April 1917.
• Notre Dame de Lorette French Military Cemetery and Ring of Remembrance – The largest French military cemetery in France. A stunning and yet humbling site which gives a good outlook on how the French remem-ber their fallen. The Ring of Remembrance was recently inaugurated 11th of November 2014, it carries the names of over half a million men who had lost their lives in of the Nord Pas de Calais.
• Lunch in Arras
• Lochnagar Crater – A spectacular vestige of the battle of the Somme where the first day started as the worse day for the British Army in its history to this date. This crater was exploded on the 1st of July 1916 and the in-tended battle which was to last just a few days dragged out into over 4 months, swallowing over a million losses on both sides.
• Newfoundland Memorial Park – A rare spot where both British and German frontline trenches are still visible and naturally preserved. No man’s land still scarred by the bloody battle which cost many lives, especially to the Newfoundland Regiment.
• Thiepval Memorial to the Missing – Largest memorial to the missing in the world maintained by the CWGC. A significant site for all British & South Africans for their losses endured in the Somme.
• Return to Arras

Day 3:

Ypres Salient Private tour

• In Flanders Fields Museum – In Flanders Fields Museum is located in the famous Cloth Hall (called the La-kenhalle in Flemish) in the centre of Ypres (Ieper). In 1998 the original Ypres Salient Memo-rial Museum was refurbished and renamed In Flanders Fields Museum. The consequences of war is the major theme of the In Flanders Fields Museum. The theme of a mirror is used to inspire visitors to examine how we look into our past; how and why we remember, and how we look at the many other nations which were involved in the Great War of 1914-1918.
• Essex Farm Cemetery – Canadian Lt Col John McCrae 1915 wrote the poem In Flanders Fields so well know the soldiers and even our generation today. The advance dressing station still stands at the spot where he wrote it.
• Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing – Ypres
• Lunch in Ypres
• Brooding Soldier – A fine & impressive Canadian memorial dedicated to those who fell in the first German gas attacks April 1915. Gas was used for the very first time, the surprise was complete to the allied forces, yet Cana-dian soldiers, despite many losses tried to hold on the best as could to hold their ground, but eventually were forced to retreat.
• Tyne Cot Cemetery (Passchendaele) and visitor centre – Largest CWGC cemetery on the western Front at the Heart of the Passchendaele combats of October to early December 1917.
• Hill 60 – Memorial to the Australian tunnelling Company and their achievements made on the 6th of June 1917. Scars of the battleground are still visible today and stories of the men who dug within its bowels. The hill was fought heavily especially in 1914 & 1915.

Day 4: Calais for 2 nights

1^st class train station from Arras to Calais via Hazebrouck

Departure: 12:04PM; Arrival : 1:56PM

1 twin room, breakfast and taxes included at Hotel ibis Styles Calais Centre***
The ibis Styles Calais Centre is situated in the centre of Calais, just 1,641 feet from Calais-Ville Train Station and 6.5 miles from the Channel Tunnel. The hotel offers a 24-hour reception and rooms with free Wi-Fi. Private parking is available on-site at an extra cost. All rooms at ibis Styles Calais Centre include a satellite TV. They also have a private bathroom with a shower. A buffet-style breakfast is served every morning in the breakfast room under the glass roof. Meeting facilities are available on site. The hotel is a 10-minute drive from Cap Blanc Nez beaches and 3.1 miles from the Car Ferry Terminal.
https://www.accorhotels.com/gb/hotel-7209-ibis-styles-calais-centre/index.shtml

Self walk tour with a map on own
Follow the red itinerary and walk through the streets of Calais.
Thanks to thematic panels, you will discover all the treasures of the city.

Day 5:
Regional train from Calais to Dunkirk via Hazebrouck
Departure: 9:06AM; Arrival : 10:04AM

4 hour Private guided tour of Dunkirk including the museum 1940
Duration: Approx. two hours
From May 26 to 4 June 1940, Dunkirk was the theatre of the largest evacuation effort in military history: 338 000 Allied soldiers were evacuated on a flotilla of more than 800 ships. Discover the incredible story of Operation Dynamo with our exclusive ‘Dynamo Tour’, a trip back in time which pays tribute to all the allied soldiers involved in the operation and who created ‘The Dunkirk Spirit’, a symbol of hope and resistance. During a pleasant tour on board your coach (or your car if you choose the individual VIP tour), which will drive you from Dunkirk to Zuydcoote, our guide will introduce you to the unmissable sites of Operation Dynamo. It will also lead you on the tracks of the shooting of the new movie ‘Dunkirk’ directed by Christopher Nolan, due to be released in July 2017. During the tour, we will stop at the following memorial places:

The evacuation beaches
The beautiful, wide sandy beaches are very peaceful nowadays. Things were quite different in the spring 1940. Imagine being a soldier of the BEF, hoping desperatly to climb on board one of the Dunkirk Little Ships to escape the ‘Hell of Dunkirk’…

The port
The East Mole in the port was the point where most of the soldiers were evacuated. We’ll make a stop at an impressive bunker, built by the Germans during the occupation, to see the preserved part of the original East Mole.

British Memorial and Cemetery
The impressive British Memorial commemorates the memory of the 4528 soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force who died during 1940 and who have no known grave. Next to the memorial is a cemetery of 810 graves of British soldiers. Most of them were killed defending the perimeter of Dunkirk during the evacuation operations in May-June 1940.

The Zuydcoote Maritime Hospital
The Maritime Hospital was a sanatorium where more than 20 000 injured soldiers were treated during the Battle of Dunkirk. About 800 of them didn’t survive…

Regional train from Dunkirk to Calais via Hazebrouck
Departure: 3:56PM ; Arrival : 5:23PM

Day 6:

1^st class train tickets from Calais to Paris via Lille
Departure 9:06AM; Arrival 12:10PM

Private transfer from train station to Airport