Dad's Visit: Brussels, Brugges, and Ypres

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My dad came to visit me for the second week of my April break, and ended up staying all of April!!! He was "stuck" in Europe for almost the entire month because of the volcanic ash and when we were in town on the weekends, we managed to take a few day trips to some different cities in Belgium.

Our first trip was showing my dad around Brussels. I gave him my ultimate walking tour that I gave to my brother when he came to visit me in February (although my dad didn't try to change my route, unlike my brother!!). I took him to all the usual sights: Sablon, Monts des Arts, Grand Place, Manneken Pis, waffle stand, and of course, Fritland!

The next day we took the train to Bruges and spent the day there. Bruges is in the Flemish region of Belgium and is a beautiful old medieval town that is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It's referred to as the "Venice of the North" because of all the canals it has. We walked past the Lake of Love, went into the Church of Our Lady to see Michelangelo's 'Madonna with Child', the Holy Blood Chapel, and took a picture in the famous scene of Bruges. We then enjoyed a drink in the Grote Markt while basking in the sun and wandered through the streets.

After our trip to Venice, my dad had two other weekends that he spent with me in Brussels. We went out for lots of nice dinners, went to the Sunday market, and my dad even came into my kindergarten class and read them a few stories - they loved it!!!!

The weekend before my Dad left, we went to Ypres for the day, which is in West Flanders in Belgium. During World War I, Ypres was the centre of intense and sustained battles between the German and the Allied forces and it's also the area where John McCrae wrote the famous poem In Flanders Fields. We saw the Cloth Hall, which was built in the 13th century and was one of the largest commercial buildings of the Middle Ages (used for trading cloth and fabrics). In the Cloth Hall there is now the 'In Flanders Fields Museum' and it looks at all aspects of WWI and they had a special exhibition looking at the Chinese Workers during WWI.
We then took a local bus (against the advise of the tourist agent, who claimed that it was impossible to get to the battlefieds without a car or tour) to the Tyne Cot Cemetery. The Tyne Cot Cemetery is the largest Commonwealth cemetery in the world. It is also the most important reminder of the bloody battle of Passchendaele. During the British offensice of 1917 tens of thousands of soldiers died here in a period of one hundred days for a gain of barely eight kilometres. Originally Tyne Cot was a bunker on the German Flandern I line. The rear wall of the cemetery is a Memorial to the Missing. It bears the names of 35,000 British and New Zealand servicemen who fell in the vicinity after August 16, 1917.
After visiting the Tyne Cot Cemetery, we headed back to the main city of Ypres and went to the Menin Gate Memorial, which commemorates those soldiers of the British Commonwealth who fell in the Ypres Salient during the First World War before 16 August 1917, who have no known grave. The memorial's location is especially poignant as it lies on the eastward route from the town which allied soldiers would have taken towards the fighting - many never to return. Every evening since 1928, at precisely eight o'clock, traffic around the imposing arches of the Menin Gate Memorial has been stopped while the Last Post is sounded beneath the Gate by the local fire brigade. This tribute is given in honour of the memory of British Empire soldiers who fought and died there. The Menin Gate in Ypres only records the soldiers for whom there is no known grave. As graves are discovered, the names are removed from the Menin Gate. We even think we might have found two possibilities for my dad's great-uncle, who died in WWI.

I had a wonderful visit with my dad and being here for almost a month gave us lots of time to explore some different places around Belgium!

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