- July 30, 2025
By Eloise Hammonds.
The trip to Paris was unlike anything I had ever experienced before; it was an amazing chance to learn about the French culture and how people live differently there than we do. I had lots of fun with my friends all while learning at the same time!
On Wednesday we spent most of the day travelling; first, around 5 hours on the coach and then about 1 hour and 30 minutes on the ferry. Another 4 hours on a coach and we finally got to our hotel! Once we got to the hotel we went outside and played football together, we went to the games room – which included a pool table, a foosball table, a dartboard, giant connect 4 and a ping pong table – we stayed in there until 10pm which is when we went to bed.
The next day, we woke up, got ready and went downstairs for breakfast. Once we had, we went back upstairs and got our things ready for the day, we walked to the Somme Museum and wandered into an underground bomb shelter. In the shelter there were glass display cases showing all kinds of different wartime remains in there, from grenades to baby shoes. They were also displaying things like guns and knives; there were even bullets ranging of sizes. Badges, medals, helmets, gas masks, hand cuffs, wallets, first aid supplies, glasses etc were all showcased at the museum; my personal favourite attraction there was the walk-through experience of a bombing attack – there were lights and sounds surrounding me and I felt completely immersed in the atmosphere.
Next, we stopped by this beautiful park and stayed there for around 45 minutes, most people played tag while others just walked around and enjoyed the impeccable views.
After that, we got on the coach and drove to a Canadian war museum, where we learnt about trenches and how the soldiers used them, we also saw a huge plaque with thousands of names of soldiers who died fighting in WW1.
When we finished at the Canadian war museum, we headed to the Thiepval memorial, a beautiful building in memory of the missing soldiers of the Somme; it showcases over 72,000 missing soldiers who died in combat during WW1. Behind this majestic structure was a graveyard for the British and French soldiers whose bodies were found and identified.
Then we visited this wonderful white statue, it has many steep stairs leading up to the top and behind was a wonderful view different from anything I had ever seen before; the scenery was outstanding and engraved onto the stone walls were names of the soldiers who died in WW1.
Afterwards, we walked around another museum which has small speakers attached to the sides of display cases which we could pick up and put to our ears – they were playing people’s stories from the war, artefacts were hung up in the display cases which related to the story the people were telling us. After we walked around the museum inside, we headed outside and walked along the stone trenches.
Finally, we visited a ginormous crater created by an underground mine shaft explosion – it was amazing and took me over 15 minutes just to walk around it! I’d never seen anything like it before and felt lucky that I got the chance to see it.
Eventually we got back on the coach and went back to the hotel, ate some food, had some fun in the games room and went to bed, ready for the next day.
Friday was a big day as we had breakfast and left to go to Parc Asterix at 9am, where we stayed until 6pm. At the theme park we went on loads of rollercoasters and drank what felt like hundreds on slushies. We went on all the wet rides and got absolutely soaked. By the end of the day, we were all exhausted, so we got sorted into our rooms – we had just entered a new hotel – and basically fell asleep straight away when we got back.
The day before we left – Saturday – we went to a science museum which was unbelievable! Towards the start of the museum were robots which were capable of so many amazing things, even speaking! There were robots which presented other types of robots, robots that could pick things up and move them, robots that had cameras and screens built into it etc.
As we wandered further into the museum, we saw a huge section on space – there was a spaceship which we could enter and look around in, there were lots of mini replicas in display cabinets and there was a room based on Mars which had an interactive screen in the centre, it was almost like a game; there were also mini statues of mars and the robots exploring mars.
Next there was a sound section which was based on how sound works, there was a giant piano room which you could stand on and music would start playing, there were 2 large white domes facing each other about 5 metres from each other; when you said something into one dome, the person standing in front of the other dome could hear everything you said no matter how loud of quiet you said it.
Once we finished, we got back on the coach and drove to a boat, we got on the boat and had a tour of Paris, where we saw the Eiffel Tower. it was absolutely boiling hot, reaching temperatures as high as 36 degrees Celsius! I remember everyone exhaling a sigh of relief every time we went under a bridge and got shade for less than 10 seconds.
We got back to the hotel and packed our bags for the next day, when we were leaving, we went to bed early because we needed to get up at 6am the next day.
On Sunday, we got up early and set off to go home, the drive was long but when we got on the ferry, we had the freedom to buy snacks or souvenirs. When we got off, the drive home was around 5 hours again, we could tell when we got back to England because it was much colder and started raining but honestly it was kind of a relief after all the hot weather in Paris.
French Trip '25 Photographs
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