Sultan Hotel Ypres

Or at least, the Lille metro.<br><br>Lille's metro system was the first one in the world without a driver, which is pretty clever really. It does make the journeys interesting, however!<br>As there is no driver, sitting right at the front of the train you can look at the tracks straight ahead of you, which is quite good fun really and reminds me of being on a rollercoaster! Of course I don't sit there screaming and shouting. At least not all the time.<br>Getting on the metro early ...

This week I have had the chance to finally be a tourist and explore my city! I planned to travel and explore France during this holiday but as it turned out I couldn't afford to do that, and there was a lot of Lille that I had yet to see (and that is still true!).<br><br>The Musée de la Piscine in Roubaix, just north of Lille on the metro, is a fantastic museum which I took my parents to. It goes by two names: La Piscine and Musée d'Art et ...

... class at 11am on Monday morning only for the teacher to tell me "Oh God, I forgot about you!"... this is to become very repetitive I can tell! I went into my first class to answer their questions and then was supposed to be working with the same teacher straight after lunch however she didn't need me because she was giving her class an exam.<br><br>So I waited around in the staff room for two hours (fortunately I had a book with me) for the ...

... place where we enjoyed relaxing at night.<br>The highlights for me were the pubs and beer cafes we found thanks to the map where I attempted to try as many different beers as possible. After 3 days I had managed quite a few.The pubs included tiny local bars hidden in alleyways and pubs boasting the number of beersthey had available. One in particular held the guinness record a few years ago at around 2000 types but today ...

So, We got up and caught a train to Bruges. As we walked towards our hostel I noticed that everything was so nice and so clean. Then we made it to the fountains. I fell in love then. The houses and buildings are so cute. They are side to side with neat little rooftops. The streets were stone and curvy. It was just so nice. <br><br>When we got to our hostel the guy working was by far the ...

... the Visitors Centre (conducted by Canadian students on Work Visas) was very informative, taking us through the reinforced Canadian and German trenches, as well as through the subway tunnel systems below the surface. As we walked back to the car, we came across a single poppy growing on the boulevard. It was touching.<br><br>With little time to spare, we rushed back to Ypres for the nightly laying of wreaths and ...

... at the main square and Cloth Hall, you wouldn&#8217;t think that this place was literally a pile of rubble and the place where over 100,000 soldiers met their fate during World War One. But that was my purpose-to step into the past, and reinforce a present and future appreciation for our men and women in uniform. <br><br><br>After my breakfast of a chocolate-twist pastry and Belgian chocolate, followed by a two-hour ...

... Aussies as we could - but we were here to see two in particular. SGT McKee VC and CAPT Jeffries VC. There are several German Blockhouses in this cemetery - aptly because this was part of the once held German Front Trenchline. On one of the Blockhouses is the foundation for the Cross of Sacrifice. The other is in front of the Capt Jeffries - he rushed forward under fire - took over the Blockhouse by killing several ...

... lady saying we were not meant to come from that way and the gate was just in front of us. Oops. The camp site is quite nice - free electricity, and showers which are clean. It is also only a 5 minute walk to the Menin gate, which is one of the reasons we came here. If you don't know Ypres was involved heavily during WW1, being smack bang on the western front. The battles that raged along here killed ...

... we approached and joined the hundreds of other people already there. As it happened, the night we arrived was the day before the 90th anniversary of the morning offensive of 12 October, 1917 that was the single bloodiest day in New Zealand military history, and busloads of fellow Kiwis had turned out to pay their respects. The ceremony at the arch included a group of Kiwi soliders led by Willie Apiata, New Zealand's newest Victoria Cross recipient. Among the other dignitaries were ...