France/Belgium, Summer 2022 - Petersontravels

Brussels…..where do I start? What a difference from Bruges and Ghent! Our first encounter exiting the train station was trash…everywhere. Then we saw the homeless people…everywhere. What a change! Then there were the obvious immigrants….lots and LOTS of them, seemingly overwhelming the city. I’ve not seen that many hijab’s since I watched Locked Up Abroad, Saudi Arabia! Don’t get me wrong, I have no issues with Muslims or immigrants in particular, but it seemed like we were in a different country, particularly after being in Bruges and Ghent. I would guess at least half the population we encountered in Brussels were not from Belgium.

Our hotel, Le Dixseptieme, is right in the heart of the old part of the city, and with rooms facing into the courtyard, it’s very quiet, which was a blessing, as this city is quite boisterous! We took a walk around the center of town, and strolled down this glass enclosed shopping center called the Galeries Royales. Reminded me of Milan.

It was beer o’clock, so we stopped for a Belgian beer.

This guy was playing chess with up to 5 people at once. He must have been famous at one point in time. I doubt he ever loses. He’s been there every time we have walked by. I’m no chess player, so I didn’t bother embarrassing myself.

The Grand Place is the central square of Brussels. These are by far the most opulent buildings we have seen in Belgium. The building in the first photo appears to be a bank. There is a Hard Rock Cafe next door. Americans are such a bad influence.

Below is the Brussels Town Hall, built in the 15th century. Stunning architecture!

I couldn’t determine what this building on the north side of the Grand Place was meant for, but it did house a Starbucks. What the hell are these people thinking?? Starbucks? So sad.

We found another Belgian Beer tasting later that afternoon. This was from a brewery called Brewdog. They were ok, but nowhere near as good as Gruut from Ghent. I wish Gruut exported to the US!

We figured out the local metro system and visited one of Belgium’s most popular attractions, the Atomium.

This structure was originally constructed for the 1958 World’s Fair, and it wasn’t expected to last too long afterwards. So much for that! The design represents an iron crystal magnified 165 billion times, roughly the equivalent of what Biden plans to do to gas prices before the end of his term. The insides of each sphere house exhibit halls, while the top sphere holds a viewing platform and a restaurant. The below view is from the top looking down on Mini-Europe, an attraction that looks a lot like Legoland (we skipped this one, we’ve seen Legoland…too many times).

We did get a Belgian beer and a snack in the restaurant at the top. You can see the curvature of the walls in the photo.

There are various escalators taking you to each sphere. This one had a light show that mimicked something you’d see at Space Mountain.

One of the exhibit areas had a pamphlet that declared the miraculous future of Atomic Energy! While I agree that nuclear energy is our best bet going forward, this didn’t age well with the 60’s generation.

More light shows! Felt like a disco!

Some of the best views were from one sphere to another.

I saw this sculpture online and had to find it and take a photo. We need one of these in my home town!

Kim in front of the Palace of Brussels. Looks like they fashioned their gates after Buckingham Palace.

I saw this statue of Mercator and I had to take a shot. As somebody who has a degree in Navigation, Mercator is a God!

This Belgian beer was sooo good I didn’t even think to take a picture until it was nearly gone!

We visited the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, that houses hundreds of Flemish artists works.

Our favorites were by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, and Pieter Brueghel the Younger, his son. Most of their best works are in this museum in their own section. This first one was painted by the Elder, and is called Census at Bethlehem, painted in 1566. It is one of the first paintings in western art to feature a snow landscape and was painted in the aftermath of the harsh winter of 1565. You can see Joseph and Mary at the bottom of the painting.

The Younger painted the same scene multiple times, as copies were highly sought after after his fathers death. Below is one of those copies. He changed up the colors, but pretty much duplicated the rest. It’s interesting that he had very similar artistic traits as his father, even though his father died when he was just 5 years old.

The museum made a pretty big deal about this painting, The Death of Morat. This 1793 painting by Jacques-Louis David depicts the murder of his friend Jean-Paul Marat, a French revolutionary leader. Art historian T. J. Clark called David’s painting the first modernist work for “the way it took the stuff of politics as its material, and did not transmute it”. Ok. While this original painting is in this museum, they have multiple copies with various people in the place of Marat. On the first floor when we first entered they had a video piece of Lady Gaga in the same pose, with audio playing of her repeating something over and over. Very bizarre, and this is your first intro to the museum! Fortunately it was all uphill afterwards.

We also went into the Magritte museum, which is attached to the Royal Museum. This is one of our favorite pieces of his art.

There were more on the bottom floor of the museum that we wanted to see, but they closed before we could get there. It was quite odd, they gave an announcement that they were closing in 10 minutes, and we were right there, but they wouldn’t let us into the last section during that time. Damn Nazi’s! We about went postal!

Our last night in Brussels was our 30th Anniversary, so we went to a special restaurant, La Villa in the Sky. This is on the 25th floor of a business building, looking out over Brussels.

This was the view from our table.

This was the view by the end of the night. Yes, it was a long meal, but it was definitely worthy of the Michelin Star the restaurant has.

Looking up at the restaurant from the ground.

Next up, we head to Namur, pick up our rental car, and explore the Ardennes region of Belgium.

We took a train from Ghent to Ypres for a half day tour of WWI sites in what is known as the Ypres Salient, aka Flanders Fields. The trains here are so fast and timely that a day trip is super easy to manage. I really wish the US had a train system like Europe does.

Ypres held a strategic position during WWI as it stood in the path of the Germans planned sweep of Belgium and France from the north. Germany’s invasion of Belgium brought the British Empire into the war, so there were soldiers from Britain, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, etc. participating in these WWI battles.

The German army surrounded Ypres on three sides, which is the definition of the term “salient”. The bulge of the Ypres Salient is shown below. This was the focus of our tour.

There were a total of 5 battles of Ypres, spanning 29 December 1914 to August 1918. This was primarily trench warfare, along with extensive shelling and mining.

We had an excellent guide, Genevra, from “Flanders Battlefield Tours”. Gen has seemingly committed every brain cell to memorizing details about the WWI battles in the area….literally a walking encyclopedia.

Our first stop was Essex Farm Cemetery, so named as that was the family that owned the farm along the front line.

This bunker built into the hillside was a field hospital to treat the wounded coming off the front lines.

This spot is famous as it was where Canadian surgeon Lt. John McCrae worked, in this small 8′ by 8′ bunker.

John McCrae is famous for writing the poem “In Flanders Fields”.

In Flanders Fields, the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead, short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

There is a memorial site for John McCrae next to the field station, which has a plaque with a copy of his writing. McCrae wrote the poem on May 3, 1915, the day after he presided over the burial of his friend Lt. Alexis Helmer. Wild poppies were known to grow everywhere in the cemetery. Legend has it he crumpled the poem up and threw it on the ground, only to have a passing soldier pick it up and save it.

The below headstone was for a 15 year old soldier, who died a week before his 16th birthday.

There are a lot of headstones for unidentified soldiers.

The entirety of Essex Farm Cemetery.

We then visited the main German Military Cemetery in Langemark. There are 44,000 Germans buried here. It’s unusual as there are no individual graves. Multiple soldiers were buried together under flat headstones.

This cemetery is the final resting place of 3000 students who quit college to join the war effort. Most of them died in battle due to a lack of training and experience. This is the why it’s also known as the Studentenfriedhof (Student’s Cemetery). Hitler was so impressed by the dedication of these former students that he visited the exact site below in 1940, and used it as propaganda for the current students in Germany.

This is a gate exiting the cemetery.

Hitler exiting the same gate.

We then visited a Canadian monument known as The Brooding Soldier.

The Germans used chlorine gas for the first time on April 22, 1915, killing both French and Canadian soldiers, bringing in the era of chemical weaponry. The below plaque is on the Canadian monument.

Chlorine gas basically liquifies your mucus membranes, causing you to drown in your own bodily fluids. Really nasty stuff. Hence the brooding Canadian.

We then visited the largest Commonwealth cemetery in Flanders Fields, Tyne Cot Cemetery. There are 12,000 soldiers buried here.

The walls that surround the cemetery list the names of another 35,000 soldiers from the UK that were never found and presumed dead.

On our way to our last stop our guide slammed on the brakes when she saw this intact shell in the field on the side of the road. The farmers dig these up on a regular basis and just stick them upright in the field until the local bomb technicians can get there. It would have made for a nice souvenir but I’d have a hard time getting it through security. Plus we like to pack light!

Our last stop was Hill 62 Sanctuary Wood museum.

Hill 62 is so named as it is literally 62 meters above sea level. All of the hills in this area have names based on their height as the high ground was of utmost importance in WWI. The Sanctuary Wood name was given in October 1914, when the trees would provide cover for troops. There are a lot of WWI artifacts in the museum itself, but the real prize here are the preserved trenches.

They trenches are quite extensive and even include an underground tunnel that ran at least 150 feet.

They weren’t quite as deep as I would have expected from watching war movies. I presume a lot of ducking went on!

The little town of Ypres is quite beautiful today, as it has been fully restored. The Germans never reached Ypres, but they shelled it repeatedly. This is what it looked like after the war ended. So basically Detroit!

We had dinner in Ypres so we could catch the Last Post ceremony at Menin Gate. The Last Post takes place at 8:00 PM every day, rain or shine, Wuhan Flu or Monkeypox, and is well worth checking out.

This tradition dates back to November 11, 1929, Nancy Pelosi’s 40th birthday as a matter of fact, and the only time it hasn’t been conducted was during WWII, when Ypres was occupied by German forces. If you expand the photo you will be able to see various parts of the gate that have been patched up with different colors. These represent damage that happened during WWII.

The ceiling of the Menin Gate.

The walls of the memorial bear the names of 54,389 officers and soldiers who fell in the Ypres Salient before August 16th, 1917, and who have no known grave.