Our coach got picked up outside of our flat at 6 am on Friday morning and drove a few hours to the Chunnel. I was really confused about how we were going to drive to Belgium but it turns out that they have enormous train cars that buses and cars can fit in. So we drove onto the train and then the train took us over to France! It was pretty cool. I tried to take pictures but they didn't really look that impressive.
We spent the first day touring WWI sites.
When we got off the Chunnel we drove the rest of the way to Belgium and went to a small town called Ypres. First stop was the WWI museum. Ypres along with many other places in Belgium were complete decimated during the war. I mean flattened. Want to read about some of the war history? Click Here!
The museum was beautifully put together. Interesting, informative, and indescribably upsetting. This museum shows both the large scale impact that the fighting had in Belgium, Ypres, and the individuals. It's impossible to understand the magnitude of a war that terrible. Then again, I have trouble grasping the horror and tragedy of any war. But we as a group found this especially hard because of the lack of attention placed on WWI in most of our educations. We knew the basics of what lead to the war and how America got involved and the post war effects but only a few of us really knew much beyond that. We were all extremely depressed as we walked out of the museum to find our hotel and eat lunch.
We had a nice lunch full of beer and waffles ....sooo delicious! Then headed out for our bus tour of town. We had a tour guide this time who came on board with us and pointed things out as we went while explaining more of the war history. We stopped at a few cemeteries and one of the restored trenches. It was intense but really interesting. I'm really glad we did it and got to see all of the locations. It helped me start to understand what actually took place in Ypres during the war.
After the tour we had another yummy meal and then went to a WWI memorial ceremony that takes place every single day at 8 pm.
Then a group of us wandered around Ypres and found a bar and went to get some drinks and hang out for a while. It was nice to get to spend time together as a group since we hadn't really done much of that before this trip.
Day two- Bruges
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| Market in Ypres |
Both Bruges and Ypres were the same size up until World War I. Bruges, unlike Ypres, was untouched in either war so it was neat to see original 14th century buildings. We climbed a big clock tower with 300+ steps with the smallest winding spiral staircase I've ever seen. It was scary going up but walking back down was kind of terrifying! I meant to take a picture but I was too afraid haha!
After that we just ate chocolate and waffles until the bus picked us up at 3 to go back to London!
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| House in Bruges |
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| This is the clock tower we climbed |
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| view from the tower |
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| wall of Belgian beers! |
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| Chocolate Ducks! |
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