A Busy Day in Belgium

For our port call in Belgium, we booked a full-day tour which enabled us to visit two places. The first, Ypres, showcased points of interest from World War I while the second was the lovely medieval city of Bruges.

Ypres is the location of the world’s largest British Commonwealth war cemetery, called Tyne Cot, where almost 12,000 soldiers are buried. The vast majority were never identified but are honored with headstones stating “A Soldier of the Great War”. In the middle photo, you can see Bill reading the names of some of the fallen soldiers.

  

The Flanders Fields Museum is filled with incredible multi-sensory exhibitions of the horrendous battle that took place in the Ypres area in 1917. We could have spent a full day there!

                       

After lunch we were off to Bruges, which has to be one of the most photogenic cities we’ve ever seen. We can see why it is the most visited city in Belgium. Absolutely gorgeous!

  

Since we had recently seen the movie The Monuments Men, we wanted to see the Madonna and Child sculpture that was stolen by the Nazis from the Church of Our Lady in Bruges. In the photo below, the statue can be seen in the middle of the altarpiece.

 

On a final note, talking about Belgium wouldn’t be complete without mentioning Belgian chocolate. It was everywhere! The window displays were unbelievable. Believe it or not, everything except the flowers in the photo below is made of chocolate!