It was kind of surreal yesterday - we spent the day with Colin's relatives travelling through WWI and WWII monuments with songs like "Black Benny"and "I will survive " playing on the Belgium radio.
Gerta and Gerrit are excellent tour guides... They led us through Verune , Diksmuide (trench of death), Nieuwpoort (where the decision to flood the country to stop the Germans was carried out) , Zonebeke (Passchendale memorial) Tyn Cot cemetery, Vladslo ( German cemetery ) and the we ended up at Ypres for the last post. It was a tough day for the kids to take in ... We managed to lose Mahri temporarily in the Trench of Death - but it was a good lesson about not running off and I am glad it happened early on in the trip- getting lost in a trench was pretty easy to manage. The last post was impressing- there was probably over 300 -500 people speaking many different languages, outside on a rainy Tuesday evening. I can 't imagine how busy it will be this summer for the 100 anniversary of WWI. Every where around Belgium you can see infrastructure works going on to get these sites ready for June.
Highlights of yesterday were eating fresh strawberries from the fruit shop.... The kids finding a huge slug at the Tyn Cot museum....seeing the rows upon rows of crosses and the last post ceremony.
This feeling of not being rushed and somewhat flexible with our travel itinerary is such a luxury- knowing we are on the road for 6 weeks lets you take things in slowly.