Ambrosia Hotel Ypres

... had a sketching guest teacher for the weekend who was an amazing sketcher/artist/architect. The first place we went was an old fortified palace up on a hilltop. It was mostly remains, but very beautiful in its own way. The next place we went was the village of Laon, a little bit more hoppin' then the last because there ere more than 2000 citizens. There was a very elaborate Notre Dame Cathedral here which we toured and sketched.
After we visited these two places ...

... still yet to fully explore! And we spent the rest of the day back in Ikea and exploring our new surroundings.
That evening we explored a little bit of Lille's nightlife and enjoyed a few cocktails just me and Erin and had a night-time walk through Vieux Lille (which was fun until it started raining)!
We spent our first Sunday on a culture trip in the "Muséé des Beaux Arts" which is free on the first Sunday of every month and was a fantastic experience, after which we got a crepe ...

... continued throughout the day as we struggled to fit it all onto the Eurostar, then struggled to get it all off when the train arrived in Lille before it set off again to Brussels!
We then met the teacher from the school at which I will be teaching who is called Annabelle, and is having us to stay until we move into our apartment on Friday. She had to make two separate trips because of the amount of luggage we had!
Annabelle is lovely and insisted that we stay with ...

... these prices.

On our way back to Herentals, we realized that doing 140km/hr doens't seem to be fast enough for some people because we still had some drivers tailgating us regardless.

We're on the last stretch of our trip unfortunately. We leave tomorrow for Canada :(

We might head into Amsterdam for dinner later today, we're a bit exhausted from not sleeping well the ...

... walked in around 9 PM. A popular thing in French restaurants is a "menu," which are multiple-course meals that offer a few choices at each stage. I love getting these because not only to you get a lot of food, it basically pre-selects the specialties of the restaurant or region. Most of us got the menu, which started with an appetizer of duck pate with prunes, followed by the Carbonade L’Ancienne, and with a desert of chocolate tart served with whipped cream and ...

... all the explosives they were handling) and more. Above ground it was surprising to see how close together the Canadian and German trenches were. 

The Vimy Memorial is truly awe inspiring. The figures carved of limestone are all allegorical not to mention stunning in their magnitude as well as beautiful in their physical perfection. Their poses evoke strong emotion. As one might expect, I was drawn to the weeping woman figure which ...

... slick no man’s land.

Still, with all this death, there were still stories of hope-the Christmas Truce of 1914, when soldiers from both sides took a break from carnage to celebrate Christmas by exchanging cigarettes, German sausage, whisky and jam, and sang carols (which, unfortunately, did not happen in all areas. William Tyrell, a Lieutenant, wrote in his diary “Thursday 24th. Christmas Eve. No Peace ...

... soldiers are buried. At least half of these are unidentified and have on their gravestones the inscription, "A soldier of the great war. Known unto God." When you arrive you can't see the cemetery itself and you walk down to a museum where there are a collection of photographs and an explanation of the Australian troops role in the Battle of Passchendale. It is quite a sombre place, made more so by the voice recording of a British schoolgirl that is reading out ...

... the recruiters came so that he could go overseas to fight in the 'great adventure'. We also stopped at a German cemetery nearby where, according to German military tradition, 'comrades in death' lay buried in graves of 20 to 30 soliders. Most chillingly, in the middle of the cemetary was a giant mass grave where, since the Belgians were unwilling to give any land to the German aggressors to bury their dead in Belgium, the remains of 25, 000 German men lie buried in a single pit. The ...

... Ieper's Lille Gate, crossing the deep green colored River Yser through a large stone bridge, we marveled at the beauty of this old town. The buildings and cobblestone streets were lined with enchanting brick buildings, bearing the typically steep Flemish roofs. It was incredible to think that this lovely ancient town was razed to the ground during the war. For the Germans, Ieper had been important because they planned their raid ...