Tuesday 29 April 2014

There's chocolate on my lace!

Tuesday 29th April

Back to Belgium again today. A few comments on Belgium. Their motorways are great and easy to get places quickly. The interchanges seemed to have been well planned out and not too much lane changing at the last minute. Their town roads though are crap – they are made out of concrete slabs so every second you go kerthump across a join. In France it was easy, town = 50k, but here in Belgium it seems to be less clear and so far today we have seen a lot of 70k sections of road between towns.

Bicycles – there really aren't that many in France, but here in Belgium there are thousands of them. Yesterday we saw a lot of tour groups on bicycle around some of the places we visited and today we have been in Brugge and the bicycle is the major form of transport.

Brugge – I really like the feel of this city. We followed Dora in and at the last turn we accidentally turned into a car park. We weren't 100% sure how close we were to the actual centre of town but a couple parking next to us spoke English and were able to tell us that we were right where we needed to be to do the town centre. The day started out overcast and with showers but not too wet to walk the streets. We arrived in the city square and noticed a City Tour bus so we decided to do that for a bit of a look around. This was a nice short intro to the city.
Buildings around the central square in Brugge.



The town hall in Brugge.

We didn't do the canal boat ride but the canals looked lovely.


A lot more people in the afternoon after the rain stopped.


The tour took us past the chocolate museum which was somewhere we planned to visit so we did the chocolate tour after we got off the bus. This was not as good a tour as we had heard and it was packed with groups of school kids who all seemed to have questionnaires to fill in at the museum. Not a lot of tastings either which is why we had to buy some chocolate later.

So, what is Brugge famous for? Lace and chocolates! We’ve added a bit of each to the luggage. The lady in the shop assured us that the chocolates would keep for 6-8 weeks. Really?


Labs never pass up food.
Watching every mouthful of ice cream.

Don't we all wish we had one of these at times.

Rob went to a Salvador Dali exhibition while I went to a lace shop and a craft shop. The lace typical to Brugge is different to Alencon lace and different to bobbin lace. I also managed to pick up a ball of sock yarn so more socks to knit when I get home.

Salvador Dali.


Tonight we are in another B&B not far from Brugge. A bit hard to find when Dora doesn’t know of the address but we found it without too much hassle. I’m not sure if it is the norm but so far in Belgium (or at least Brugge) we have found that most people in shops speak English and our host at the B&B also speaks very good English. Makes it a bit easier for us as, but we now have to break the habit of speaking French!!

Home for the night.
Kurt has pet goats including 2 two week old kids.
Very cute! 

At the suggestion of Kurt (our host) we went to the restaurant called 't Schildersverdiet whose specialty is ribs. We each had ribs - about 12 of them in a row that went from one end of the plate to the other. They were served with a huge potato and salad. When we were just over 1/2 way through the waitress asked if she should do some more. No - we had enough. Apparently it was all you can eat and she had known people to have 8 serves!! We watched as those around us had second and third helpings! Made me feel ill just to think about it.

Try pronouncing that after a few drinks!

These are the ribs!!
There is a canal opposite the restaurant and these barges
were heading both ways on the canal.
Some were loaded to the gunnels with sand.
Canal goes from Brugge to Ghent.

The Reality of War

Monday 28th April

I’ll start off with a report on the Quick Palace – it rated quite well on the scorecard with a bigger than we are used to room, comfortable bed, good shower and a good breakfast so we are quite happy to try another Quick Palace if we see one. And I'll give a bonus tick to the staff, both when we checked in and when we checked out. 

We spent the day touring WWI sites between Villers Bretonneux and Ypres in Belgium. We have all read in history books the numbers of men who went to war and the number that didn’t come home, but to see cemetery after cemetery filled with these men all of a sudden makes the numbers real, and we remember that there are still thousands of missing soldiers who don’t have graves. Some of the battles that we read about at the memorials we visited seemed so pointless  - thousands of lives lost for a gain of only yards. We visited mostly Australian memorials which all were extremely well kept, and all the memorials had wreaths that had been laid on Anzac Day. The Australian forces are well remembered and respected by the French and Belgians.

The school in Villers Bretonneux - also a museum.

The Digger statue at Bulle Court.


Lots of unidentified soldiers from all countries.

Cobbers statue
- near VC corner cemetery, near Fromelles.


British Butte cemetery.

Tyne Cot cemetery
- 12000 buried but not all identified.
During our travels in the day we passed into Belgium without ceremony or fanfare – in fact we weren’t exactly sure when we crossed the border but the numbers of Belgian plated cars increased and the town and street names became almost unpronounceable with lots of ‘o’s and ‘e’s in them. We then passed back in to France with the same lack of fanfare.

Dinner – we are usually pretty tired by the end of the day so we look for something close to the hotel. Across the road we could see a bar/brasserie and from the number of trucks parked we figured they were open. They were open and doing a roaring trade. There was only one other female in the restaurant apart from the 2 waitresses. We had no idea what the go was and the waiter was so busy he had no time to explain anything (and I’m not sure he had a word of English) so we just went with the flow and had the Grande Formule – 13 euro for 4 courses and a ½ pitcher of wine each. And the food was great! An enjoyable experience.
 
Dinner with the truckies.


Sunday 27 April 2014

Touring the Somme

Sunday 27th April

Having been caught out before with nothing being open on a Sunday we decided we needed to head off early and get to Amiens before lunch and hope that the tourist info centre was open. It started out another wet day with rain for most of the drive. Again the weather started to clear as we neared our destination. Plan achieved – we arrived in Amiens at 11.30 and as Dora led us to the info centre we kept coming up against road closed signs – the whole of the centre of Amiens was closed off for one of their twice a year flea markets. Well, I set Dora the task of finding another way, and she did! In the info centre we picked up maps and info on sights to see regarding the fighting in the Somme in WWI.

The cathedral in Amiens.


The Australian Bar - in Amiens.
We didn't go inside to see if they had meat pies and tomato sauce.

We first visited the Australian Memorial at Villers Bretonneux. Neither of us realised that the actual battle at Villers Bretonneux took place between 24th and 26th April in 1916. Today marked the end of a week of activities in the area regarding the battle at VB. At the memorial there had obviously been a huge dawn service on Anzac Day (from the number of porta loos waiting to be picked up). There were a lot of wreaths, flags and poppies and also remembrance cards from students at schools in Australia. Pretty sobering to see the lines of headstones and realise that they were only a very small portion of those who lost their lives in this war.
 
The Australian National Memorial at Villers Bretonneux.


Looking back from the top of the tower.


From there we visited other sites in the Somme – at Pozieres, the tank memorial and the memorial to the AIF 1st  division, at Thiepval the memorial to the 72000 unidentified British soldiers, and the Lochnagar Crater where a huge bomb was buried under the german lines and blew a crater 300ft across and 70ft deep. Across this whole area were cemeteries for the soldiers who were killed in the Somme.
 
Rob had mentioned that they were still finding unexploded
ordnance and there it was - next to one of the memorials
and I guess waiting for the 'bomb squad'.


Sailly-le-Sec
- memorial to the 3rd Australian Division.

Crater left by the bomb at La Boisselle.

Memorial to the 1st Australian Division "Gibraltar"

The Tank Memorial

The Franco British Memorial
- to the 72000 unidentified soldiers.
The largest British war memorial in the world.

Tonight we are trying a different hotel chain - the Quick Palace. No, not the quickie palace and the room isn’t sold by the hour! So far the hotel is scoring well on the scorecard.


I need Monet's gardener!

Saturday 26th April

We took a bit of a big detour today to go to Monet’s Garden at Giverny. It wasn’t open when we were in Paris so I’d slotted this is as something to do as we passed across the north of Paris – didn’t realise it was going to be quite such a big detour but we are both glad we did this.

We succumbed today to driving the motorways (not the tollways) so that we could cover the long distances and have time to do some sight-seeing as well in the day. Today we seemed to pass through mostly farming country and less populated that the earlier part of our trip. The canola is looking great and about waist height – not sure when harvest time is. There was also a lot of what appeared to be wheat but this was only about 1 foot high.

It  rained on and off most of the trip but cleared slightly once we reached Giverny. Maybe the inclement weather kept the crowds at home as we didn’t have to wait to get into the house and gardens. Wow! The colour in the gardens is just incredible. I want a garden like that. I think we came at a good time, one month into spring, as so much was in flower. The best thing was the wisteria was in flower across the famous bridge over the pond.  Just a few photos for a taste.
 
The famous bridge -
and I'm pretty happy with the colours in the photo.


More tulips - nearly at the end of their season




Beautiful colour in the Japanese maples.

Couldn't get the bridge to myself
 - lucky it was a quiet day.

What is the flower in the foreground
 - some sort of iris?

We stayed the night in Evreux in another of our chain hotels. Before heading to the hotel we drove the town up and back, and in and out, looking for a laundromat with no success. We asked at the hotel when we got there but they didn’t know where one was either and offered to do the laundry for us – no charge. That is great service for any hotel let alone a cheap chain hotel. Anyway, we headed into the main part of town for dinner and almost right next door to the restaurant we ate at was a laundromat – must have been the only street we didn’t drive down.
Dinner that got away!
It was the biggest snail I have ever seen.

Friday 25 April 2014

Anzac Day

Friday 25th April - Anzac Day

We had real rain overnight for the first time on the trip and woke this morning to a very overcast, cold and gloomy day. It rained on and off as we drove to our first stop for the day, the Bayeux Tapestry in Bayeux. This is a really spectacular piece of work and tells the story of the battle between Harold and William the Conqueror to take the throne. It is 70m long by 50cm high and weighs 350kg. There is an audio guide that tells the story as you move through but I felt the commentary was too quick for you to have a good look at each scene of the tapestry. I guess though, during the peak of tourist season, they want you to move through as quickly as possible so they can get the queues through. It was interesting to also read about the times they nearly lost the tapestry – once when it was used as a tarp to cover a cart load of stuff!!


The cathedral in Bayeux.
Sorry there are no photos of the tapestry - not allowed.


Beautiful windows.

Also in Bayeux is a museum to the D-Day landings on the Normandy beaches. The museum lays out the battle day by day. Quite appropriate we felt that we were spending Anzac Day visiting war sites in France, and thinking of our own soldiers who fought in France in both wars.

Tanks - no idea of what tanks these are.




From there we drove to the beaches to see the fortifications. The first place we visited was still swarming with buses and cars at 5pm so it was a quick visit while we parked the car up on the footpath. (the French way) Further around the beach were bunkers for big guns up on the shore. Away in the distance you could just see the white cliffs of Dover – just before the rain started again.
Fortifications on the Normandy beaches.

The gun emplacements.

That is the white cliffs of Dover in the centre of the photo.