July 6 – From Flanders Field to Passchendaele and more

From thinking about the time the Halifax Boys’ Choir sang Flanders Field at the Camp Hill Hospital Remembrance Ceremony to hearing On the Road to Passchendaele at the Tattoo a few years ago to thinking of the song White Cliffs of Dover, today had it all and more.

Starting off today, we headed to Ypres, Belgium to visit the Flanders Field Museum. We parked the car in a 3 hour time period thinking we would have ample time to get casually get through the museum and back to the car with time to spare. Were we ever mistaken! There was so much information to read there. They definitely covered all parts of the conflicts. After 2.5 hours, we walked down to the Menin Gate again to have a better look around without an extra couple hundred people.

Back to the car, we drove around and went able to drive directly under the gate. Very impressive area. After this we headed out to try to find the area the John McCrae wrote In Flanders Field, but as there are many cemeteries here we ended up at the wrong one. After looking around there, we were close enough so we headed over to Passchendaele monument. Here we discovered the other end of the last step as seen on the Halifax waterfront.

After a quick stop to get some food, we were off to the correct cemetery that we were looking to go to originally. Here we did our first geocache of the trip. Leaving a travel bug that has a connection to the wars. Figured that was the perfect spot to place it. Hope it gets to travel around a bit more.

Having time to kill we headed back up to Dunkirk and Calais…what can I say I am a girl who loves being near the water. In Calais, we had a fantastic beignet tunsani. Finally, today we up back in Seclin at a our first sit down restaurant of the week. Back in the hotel it is time to pack up as tomorrow it is off to Germany.

Total steps today was 11,388…not too many but enough in 30+ weather!

Oh…one more thing…We think they found Patrick’s phone in Paris! It should be shipped to Germany (hopefully tomorrow so we get it before we move on this Sunday….fingers crossed)