Inter-Hotel Auberge Du Forgeron Seclin

Hello all,
sorry it has been such a long time, but the pace has really picked up around here. This trip was from a long time ago, about two weeks now. I will briefly cover it because it was such a great experience.

Our school takes us on one field trip each semester. This first field trip we went on went to Couzy, Laon, Lille, and Amiens. All are in Northern France. All 41 students went along with three of our professors, history, design and structures. We ...

... 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 ...

... until Friday as she "enjoys the company"!
On Sunday night we saw Lille by night and ate local food in a lovely restaurant with its own brewery in the cellar!
On Monday and Tuesday morning we did pratical things such as getting French phones sorted out, opening bank accounts and visiting the "foyer des jeunes" where we will be staying together in a studio apartment. Everything seemed very nice and we know that there are a couple of other English assistants staying ...

... before and rising early to drive in to drop off the car in Antwerp then catch a train to Brussels to pick up the keys to our apartment. Which btw is better than the last one we were in!! It's a bit bigger and has a big balcony overlooking the city. I've taken some photos and will include them in the next travel blog update (either later tonight or tomorrow after we arrive in Canada).

... Antwerp.

The Vimy memorial is enormous. We could see it from the highway as we were approaching it. It's 80 metres high. All the tour guides at Vimy Memorial are Canadian students living in Vimy/Arras for 3-4 months in exchange for being tour guides. I was talking to one of the guides there who is going to Ottawa U. You just have to be bilingual, a student and willing to ...

Bullecourt

The journey to Bullecourt was not as straightforward as it looks on the map, as we took a few wrong turns while trying to follow the sometimes confusing GPS directions. The roads were narrow and we felt as though we were in the true regional areas of Picardy. We spotted a white tower decorated with the Australian, French and UK flags, and we soon found that this welcomed us to the village ...

... br>
On the way, we found a nice park and somehow decided that it would be a great idea to have a race. I ended up in the first heat, though my dream of reliving my former junior high district championships faded quickly once I wiped out spectacularly on the wet grass. As consolation, I was told it was a) a very graceful fall, and b) I would’ve totally won, had I stayed on my feet. Unfortunately, I soon realized what was wrong with the grass – ...

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.

We stopped for lunch at the Old Cheese Factory after twisting and turning on the roads. We found a nice table outside in the sunlight where tiny spiders (or ants?) seemed to appear from nowhere. I flicked at least 10 off Lucy's hair during the course of lunch yet we couldn't tell where they were coming from. After our salmon and goat cheese croques we stayed talking and laughing under the sun while I ...