Belly-aches in Belgium!

Hey everyone!

Janita and I are BACK! After two weeks and 4 countries we arrived back into the Netherlands with heaps of photos and a HUGE collection of great memories.

First stop - Belgium. Here are some of the highlights: the beautiful city of Gent, wandering around the cute city streets, visiting Ypres and seeing a lot more WW1 history, trying a lot of delicious chocolate, testing out a few beers and camping.

Here are some of the interesting events - camping in the grottiest camp site ever that had THE MOST DISGUSTING excuse for a bathroom, setting up the tent in all sorts of weather, the flea market in Brussels (which looked like someone had backed up a truck and tipped a whole lot of garage sale junk onto the ground), the rain, rain, rain, rain and oh, did I mention the rain?

Here is some evidence of our travels :)

Enjoy,
Love Sarah xxx

Chocolate in Antwerp - eat too much and you get a belly-ache :)

First attempt at setting up the tent - it took 1 hour, would you believe?! The next time - 30 mins, then 22 minutes and after that we had it down to about 15 minutes - at least we improved :)

The beautiful city of Gent - it had heaps of outside sitting areas, filled with tables, where everyone sat to have dinner or a drink. It had such a great atmosphere!

The Australian War Cemetery in Ypres. I have never seen so many gravestones in one place... gives you the goosebumps...

Poppies - in Flanders Fields! Ypres is actually in the area known as Flanders Fields. It is true that poppies grow everywhere in the region. We went to the Essex Farm Cemetery, which is in the exact location where John McRae wrote his now famous poem. So cool to actually see the area!

The Tyne Cot Cemetery - the largest military cemetery in Europe. It is absolutely HUGE - wherever you look, it seems that the gravestones are endless

The Menin Gate - so much bigger than I ever imagined!

Just a few of the names - add this to the amount of gravestones we saw and you realise the incredible loss of life in WW1. You can read the figures in a book, but when you seen the gravestones and the names written out, it seems so much greater

The buglers playing The Last Post - at 8pm every night, under the Menin Gate, the buglers play The Last Post, in memory of the fallen. On the night we were there, a much more formal service was conducted because a group from the Canadian Army were visiting. The service lasted for about 20 minutes and included a marching band, the Last Post, the Ode, wreath laying and also the short poem pictured below. There were so many people there - an incredible experience!

This was read during the service

We then headed off to Bruge - and visited a chocolate museum.

This is the best bloke I've met in Europe so far!

To work off all the chocolate we hired a tandem bike for an hour. Was quite a hilarious experience! Such a strange feeling, trying to balance with two people :)

Mannekin Pis in Brussels. I expected a decent sized statue. This thing is INCREDIBLY small! I was warned that the size is a let down - but the fact it was actually as small as it is was so funny! And to think it's one of the most visited statues in Europe... hilarious!

What do you think this is? Have a guess and then scroll down for the answer...

One of the Belgian beers I tried. There are so many, it's hard to choose, so I just told the bartender what kind of beer I liked and he chose for me :) That worked really well, coz I ended up with some great beers! Could definitely become a beer drinker if I lived in Belgium!

ANSWER:

It's a beer menu!! We went to Delirium Cafe in Brussels which is in the Guinness Book of Records for having the most beer options on their menu - over 2004! Yes, 2004!! Incredible, isn't it! How can you choose a beer when you have so many options?!

Next stop: Luxembourg!