Campanile Lille Seclin

... and go to school. There was a nice little Canal down the middle of the town and very cute shops and restaurants for all. We then piled back on the bus one more time and headed for the WWI memorial Museum in.... I dont remember. It was equally as awesome and housed some great war paraphernalia.

All in all, this was a great trip. Very exhausting, we were always on the go, but very helpful to understanding every aspect of architecture.Stay tuned for Amsterdam!!!

... but French, Spanish, German, and on Friday I even observed a "Couture" lesson, which is a strand of the vocational studies which my school provides and trains students on how to design and make clothes.
The week has been challenging but very worthwhile, if not only for my confidence in French but meeting other foreigners in Lille and branching out of my comfort zone.
Today to start off as we meant to go on, travelling-wise, we took the train to Brussells, went for lunch in ...

... also met with an advanced group which was all girls, none of whom were shy at all and they seemed quite nice, however I won't be working with them very often, if at all!
This afternoon we went into Lille to explore, and ate in a nice restaurant / café where the waitress helped us out with our French and we were very proud of ourselves when we managed to communicate in French with people in every shop we went into! We can both feel the difference in the quality of our ...

... 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 ...

... work in Arras/Vimy as a tour guide. Wonderful experience for them if you ask me.

We visited also the trenches but didn't have time to take the 50 minute guided tour unfortunately. So we just walked around it ourselves. Around the entire site, there were areas that were off limits because of undetenated explosives from the war. Those areas were closed off with ...

... de France press conferences are held, we headed over to the Lille train station. The building of the TGV (France’s high-speed train system) within the city limits of Lille has really revitalized the town, and the station itself is really impressive. A big component is the fact that it connects Vieux (Old) Lille with the new developments on the modern side of the city. After more sketching, and enjoying a grain-filled lunch of baguette with nutella taken from the ...

Arrived off ferry that we almost missed b/c of accident on m20. also, jason forgot his sweatshirt at Abra's so had to go back there to get it. Then got to ferry where I got told, I think its P & O, but not really sure which ferry company I booked with......ok, this will be a new adventure. Got to Lille, had a great dinner, and now about to head to normandy.....

With only the very briefest of stops at Lille we charged across the WW1
battlefields of Flanders, towards Brussels. This was countryside which
would have still been more familiar to my Grandfather than myself. My
one or two visits to Antwerp on the ships I had captained did not avail
me of very much sightseeing! The trip we made in 1973 took us south
very quickly across the flat lands towards Luxembourg.

... you want to curl up for a nap between the headstones. So I just walked for an hour until I got into the town of Vimy, managed to buy a bottle of water, and just waited at the shelter for the bus to come. Today's itinerary isn't what I would recommend anyone planning on visiting Vimy Ridge to copy, but if you are traveling cheaply without a car then it seems to be the only way. And it makes for a good story :)

... in the bottles. Many beer fanatics consider this to be some of the best beer in the world. It was a long drive home from Belgium- through northern France - arriving in Amsterdam at 1:00 a.m. Another outing consisted of a road trip to Koln (Cologne), Germany to see the grand Cathedral there. Chris' mom had seen the cathedral when she was 7 years old, before World War II, when it was surrounded by a ...