Ypres Salient Tour

3 June

The next morning I had an email from the first tour company saying they didn't have any space in their tours for that day, as I had expected. So I called the second tour company, Quasimodo tours, and fortunately the man I spoke to said yes, they had space! We arranged to be picked up in front of the train station just minutes down the road from our hotel at about 9am. Breakfast was only served at our pension from 8:30, and I wanted to find an ATM to get cash out as I wasn't sure if we could pay for the tour on card, so we skipped the pension breakfast to get to the train station early enough to find an ATM. It was a cold and drizzly day so we had our jackets and scarves on for the first time in weeks. We had no problems locating the ATM to get cash, then went inside the train station to find somewhere to get breakfast. The first thing we saw when we walked in was a little fast-food type bakery, so I got a chocolate pastry & fruit juice and Andre got a muesli, strawberry & yoghurt breakfast cup. We ended up at our meeting spot with heaps of time to spare.

A little after 9 we were picked up by Phillip in the Quasimodo bus. He had already collected a few people, and we picked up about another fifteen from another meeting point nearby. In total there were around 20 people on the tour, not small but not too big either. The tour ended up being very good. It was all located around the Ypres salient, about 30 - 45 minutes' drive south of Brugge, depending on the weather and roadworks. Phillip and his Australian wife have been running these tours for over ten years (I think he might have even said twenty years?) so he knew a lot about the area and World War I. I had read a lot about the three battles of Ypres and the battle of Passchendaele before we went, but didn't really understand how it all fit together. He painted a perfect mental picture of how the war started, how the Belgians were caught up in it, and the part the battles of Ypres played in it all.

He took us to see Hill 60 where the Australian 1st Tunnelling Company dug and maintained the tunnels below the German front at Passchendaele ridge during the Battle of Messines (featured in the movie Beneath Hill 60). We were able to see a british bunker there, and the remains of a German bunker that has now mostly sunk underground into the muddy clay soil. There are still a lot of undetonated munitions in the ground, so he warned us that we might want to stay to the well-worn path, although there are no fences restricting where you walk. Beside Hill 60 there was an Australian war memorial, which ironically, now bears holes from World War 2 bullets. We also saw several Commonwealth war cemeteries, the largest being Tyne Cot near Passchendaele.

We also saw another at Polygon Wood, the site of a significant battle involving Australian troops, where there now stands a memorial dedicated to the 5th Division of the Australian Imperial Forces, which I thought was the division my great-grandfather's cousin served in, but it wasn't. He was in the 3rd Division, which did still fight alongside the 5th Division in, among others, the Battle of Messines and the 3rd Battle of Ypres, which included the Battle for Passchendaele, the 'suicide mission' where the allies decided to launch an assault on the Germans, rather than the other way round as had been the case for the first two Battles of Ypres (which turned out to be an utter catastrophe).

We also saw the Canadian war memorial, 'The Brooding Soldier', possibly one of the best war memorials in Belgium, and the German Langemark War Cemetery. Unlike Commonwealth war gravestones, German gravestones are black rather than white (a condition of the Treaty of Versailles). They also normally lie flat on the ground, not upright, and this particular cemetery is modelled not like a garden (like the Commonwealth ones often are), but is covered in plain grass and tall oak trees, a german symbol for strength.

The trip also included a visit to the Hooge Crater museum (the crater itself has since been filled in) where we had lunch (somewhat disappointingly, just a sandwich, but it was included in the price so can't complain too much) and to Ypres where we saw the Menin Gate, engraved with the names of Commonwealth missing soldiers from WWI bar the New Zealanders (who requested their names be recorded at memorials located at the actual battle sites). We also saw one of the few restored trenches in the area and even that has not been very well restored. Our guide Phillip was very critical of the poor effort the Belgians have put in to conserving their trenches and bunkers, in comparison with countries like France that have done a very good job. Belgium has now realised the opportunities they have missed out on and is now scrambling to recover and restore as much as it can (I think he said they are even digging and building new trenches), spending much more than they would have originally if they had just restored trenches and bunkers as they discovered them. I think he said there are only two restored trenches in the Ypres Salient area.

Phillip also took us to a farm off a side-road to show us some of the 'iron harvest', the various shells that farmers still, reasonably regularly, recover from their fields. Belgians recover, on average, 200,000kg of munitions each year, one third of which is still live. They just leave it by the side of the road for the military to recover, which can take a few weeks! As a result, these shells just sit by the road for anyone to come and look at and take photos of. One lady in our group asked, "so how do you know these won't blow up right now?" Phillip looked at her, at the shells on the ground, then back up at her and shrugged and said "I don't really! But they've been there for 90 years and haven't blown up yet so they're probably ok. I wouldn't go throwing them around though!" I loved it because I thought there was no way in the world that would ever happen in Australia!

Despite getting very wet feet from walking around in sodden fields in perpetual foggy rain all day, we had a very good trip. Not only did we see some of the most important Commonwealth WW1 sites, but Phillip was very knowledgeable and seemed to know pretty much everything there is to know about Belgium and the Commonwealth's involvement in WWI.

That night we decided to have our anniversary celebratory dinner, and 'went out' for dinner at the restaurant right next door to our hotel. Andre had marinated pork ribs with mashed potatoes, and I had sugared ducks leg served with roasted potato and baby carrots. The ribs were a bit dry, but the mashed potatoes were excellent. My duck's leg was very well cooked, the best duck I've ever had - not at all dry, I kept referring to it as chicken by mistake. The veggies were also very tasty. For dessert Andre had cuberdon ice-cream and I went with what belgians know best and had chocolate mousse. At first we didn't know what cuberdon was, so we asked the waitress who took our order.

"It's, uh... hmm, I am not sure how to say in english... it's a lolly, it's very flemmish, it's.... umm, I am not sure how else I can describe it... it is nose-shaped, it's a nose-shaped lolly." Intrigued by this, Andre decided to go ahead and order it anyway.

It was a very, very familiar flavour, but we couldn't pick it for the first ten minutes or so. It was a pinky-purple coloured ice-cream with crushed musk lollies on top. After a while, I picked it - "fairy floss! The good fairy floss, like from The Show, not the free stuff you get at O-week. Raspberry! Pink raspberry fairy floss!" And that's exactly what it tasted like. The mousse was also very good, though perhaps not quite as set as I'm used to.

Overall it turned out to be probably one of our favourite days out of the entire trip!

Munich

26 May

Our first full day in Munich was a Saturday. For our first exploration of the city, we decided to take another Sandeman's New Tour like we did in Paris. On our way to the meeting place in Marienplatz, we got breakfast in a bakery and wow, I want to bring a German bakery home. We both got pastries and they were both excellent!

Our tour started off in Marienplatz in front of the new town hall just in time to see the glockenspiel go off at 11am. It's really just a bunch of bells playing an old song nobody really knows, with some wooden mechanized statues doing a simple performance. Again, contrary to the stereotype (myth?) of German efficiency, this is not yet automatic, and a man has to climb the stairs at 11 and 12 every morning to press a button for the glockenspiel to start. Our guide said once during Oktoberfest, he never actually turned up. What's more, the bells are actually out of tune, despite being sent to the Netherlands for tuning several years ago. The Dutch, who are supposed to know their bells, sent back all the 'C' bells playing C#. The Germans reckon this was on purpose.

Our tour guide took us round to many of the well known and some less well known sights in Munich, including the cathedral, Hofbrauhaus (the most famous beer hall in the world), the Munich Residenz, the opera house, the markets, the street of the Munich Putsch (google it) where Hitler was arrested, still as a near-nobody, and subsequently charged with treason (a charge that normally attracted the death sentence or life in prison -the nazi-sympathising judge sentenced him to five years, of which he served less than ten months) and she showed us many of the little, often unnoticed, signs of the nazis that still remain. An example is the nazi eagle which was put on everything the nazis built. The Germans have left the eagles there, but decapitated them, so all over Munich on buildings, bridges, monuments etc you can find headless eagles.

After our tour we decided to visit the Munich Residenz. It's the old residence of the Bavarian rulers -electors, dukes and kings, whatever title they had at the time. It was very damaged during the second world war and was reconstructed in a basic fashion, with the facade painted on, as they did not have the time or money to reconstruct an elaborate facade. The real facade is only now being rebuilt, slated to be complete in fifteen years. Our guide suggested it would be more like twenty. Inside however, much was preserved, with paintings and furnishings removed before the war and returned afterwards. We spent several hours walking through the bedrooms, state rooms, dining rooms, etc of the old kings, who were only deposed in 1918 after the first world war.

Afterwards we did a bit of grocery shopping for breakfast food, fruit and chocolate (you know, the essentials), before having tea at a tavern-type restaurant down the road from our hotel.

Oh- funny story from our tour. A few hundred years ago, a new opera house was built in Munich. One day, a fire started inside as often did in theatres with all the candles. The architect said- never fear! I built in this great gadget that will save the day!

He had built an upside down dome into the ceiling with a hole in the roof above it. The idea was that it would collect rain water, and when necessary, you could pull on a rope which would open the dome, releasing all the water onto the theatre below. So he pulled the rope. Nothing happened.

You see, it gets very cold in Munich. The water has frozen, and was stuck in the ceiling.

So everyone panicked because their opera house was still burning down. Then someone realised- hey, we don't have much water, but we have lots of beer! So they formed a line from the nearest beer hall to the opera house, and started passing the barrels of beer along. But Munichers are very much like australians, in that they really like their beer. So as the barrels got passed to each person, they took a swig before passing it on. The barrels reached the end of the line empty.

They still threw the wooden barrels onto the fire. The opera house burnt down.

Florence

After five nights in Rome we moved up the coast to Florence. This was one of the simplest legs of the trip, just one train the whole way. We were in a compartment with four others (two small children shared a seat). It was a noisier, slower, older train than others we've been on, but the seats were more comfortable than some others.  We were a little worried at first that the train wasn't airconditioned, as Rome was pretty warm and when the train was stopped the airconditioning was off. But once the train started moving the aircon came through and it was all good.

Florence was very warm too when we arrived, probably about 30 degrees. We had some trouble finding our bus, as the bus stops had changed since the instructions we had were written. It was right by the train station though, and we found a news stand nearby that sold tickets. In many Italian cities you can't buy bus tickets on the bus and need to buy them beforehand, normally from tobacconists or newsstands. This can be a pain after hours or on Sundays when such places are closed, so it's good to buy a bunch at once if you know you're going to be taking a few bus trips.

We couldn't tell from the bus map if it stopped outside our caravan park or not, so we got off a stop too early at Piazzale Michelangelo. This wasn't a bad thing though, as the view from the Piazzale is excellent - and nearly matched by the view from the deck at the campsite. We only had to walk about another 200m (if that) to reach the campsite. We were staying in a three-bed permanent tent, about half way down the campsite (which is on a hill to the south of the historical centre of the city). From the tent there wasn't much view, but at the top of the campsite at the bar/restaurant the view was excellent. We spent our first afternoon at the Piazzale taking photos of the view and watching a few dozen kites, including one enormous one that would have been a good 5m squared, with tails. We got burgers from a snack stand for dinner (cheap but pretty lousy food) then spent the evening having drinks on the deck at the campsite.

Our first full day in Florence ended up being cold and drizzly. In the morning I bought some breakfast items from the campsite minimarket - chocolate-filled and jam-filled croissants (which we had discovered in our B&B in Rome), yoghurt, juice poppers, and cereal. This was our sole day to explore the city, so we spent time walking around, seeing the Ponte Vecchio, markets, Duomo, and other impressive buildings, and visited the Accademia (to see Michelangelo's David) and a Leonardo da Vinci museum. We decided to skip the Uffizi due to time contraints - we decided we'd seen enough art museums for now and were more interested in Leonardo da Vinci and specifically wanted to see David. Florence is a very pretty city, prettier than Rome. Rome is big and imposing and impressive, but Florence is pretty.

For dinner we had pizza and salad on our campsite deck - the pizza was reaonable, a good base but the toppings were a bit average, so still not as good as the pizza we discovered on our last night in Rome. The plastic 'walls' had been fastened down around the deck though due to the cold wind that had been around all day, so the view wasn't quite as nice as it had been the night before. We got hot chocolates after dinner, and WOW, they were the best hot chocolates ever! It was like drinking hot chocolate cream! We needed them as the evening was very cold. In fact all three nights in Florence were cold, something the locals told us was very unusual, which was unlucky as we were in a tent! Andre and I squished into one bed one night (we had a bunk bed and one single) to keep warm but it was a bit uncomfortable so the next night we went back to separate beds, though half way through the night I woke up so cold even with two blankets that I considered moving into his bed again!

For our second (and last) full day in Florence, we had booked a bus tour of the Tuscan countryside. We just had croissants for breakfast as the minimart wasn't open yet and I'd bought two packets the day beforehand, so we had spares! For our tour we met outside a cafe at 8:45am and drove out of Florence a little after 9. Our first stop was Siena, a medieval walled city. We were supposed to have an hour of free time before our guided tour, but due to some elderly americans who complained very loudly about going "too fast" and "not being able to see" the guide, we took much longer to get into the town centre (as it's car-free, the buses have to park outside and we walked in). This meant we only ended up with about half an hour of free time, so we didn't go very far. We then had a local take us on a tour of the town, through the cobblestone streets and into the elaborately decorated cathedral (covered in marble, including a parquetry-type marble floor, the only one of its type in the world). After the tour was lunchtime, where we had the option of eating at a place reserved by the guide with others from the tour. It was eleven euros each and basically all you can eat pasta, cold meats & cheese, salad, bread (served with olive oil and balsamic vinegar), wine and water so we decided it was a pretty good deal. It was a good opportunity to meet some of the other travellers on the tour, and we chatted with some Indians, Americans from Oklahoma and Canadians.

After lunch we left Siena and moved on to Monteriggioni, which can't even be classified as a village - it's really just a castle on a hill surrounded by farmland. We only had an hour there, enough time to climb the wall and look at the view over the countryside and look through the shops that now inhabit the castle walls, before we moved on to a winery for some wine and olive oil taste-testing which Andre had been looking forward to all day! We met some other Canadians there, Duy and Anita, and swapped gelateria recommendations with them - they were heading to Rome so we recommended Giolitti's, and they had just left Venice so recommended a gelateria there! I didn't mind the white wine that we tasted but wasn't a fan of either of the reds, but I never like red wine. We didn't buy any of the wine or oil there, but did buy some of the lavender honey that they also produce - I'm hoping we don't have too much trouble getting it back into Australia!

Our last stop was San Gimignano, another medieval walled town on a hill, known for its towers that can be seen from all across the countryside. Again we only had an hour there - not enough to explore it really as it is much larger than Monteriggioni and could be classified as a small town, but we did taste some of the gelato there and bought some postcards.

On our return to Florence we decided to try and find a restaurant that Duy had recommended for dinner. Easier said than done. It took us more than an hour as Andre had recorded the restaurant name on his phone, and his phone battery had gone flat. So we had to find a cafe with a power point where we could plug the phone in to check the restaurant details. That took long enough, but then Google Maps pinned the wrong spot on our map (even with the correct address), and TripAdvisor flatout gave the wrong address. We ended up finding it eventually though and we ended up not being extremely impressed. Andre said his steak was excellent, but Michelle and I got lasagna which, while it tasted good, had next to no meat in it and no tomato sauce at all - not sure if that's traditional or not, but none of the other lasagna we had in Italy was like that. We did have very tasty bruschetta though. The late dinner meant we didn't have a chance to do any laundry as we'd wanted and were up late clearing photos off our SD card onto Andre's phone.

We did enjoy our time in Florence, even though it was cold we liked semi-camping as something different to the B&Bs, hotels and apartments we'd had up to that point.

Paris

Tonight is our fourth night in Paris - nearly the end if our stay here. It feels like it's gone faster than our time in London. That could be because our first full day in Paris was a very big one. We decided to start the day with a Sandeman's New Tour. Their general tours are free (they also offer specialised tours which they charge for) and the idea is you pay there guide what you think the tour was worth. As a result the guides put a lot of effort in, and the tour was a lot of fun.

 It's a three and a half hour walking tour, and we saw Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, the exterior of the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe (from a distance), Place de la Concord (where many people including Marie Antoinette lost their heads), Champs Elysees, (possibly one of the most famous streets in the world), and many other historical bridges, squares, and execution sites. Our guide Jacqueline was a lot of fun, and also Australian.

After the tour she took those of us who wanted to a nearby restaurant to try some traditional French food. I was happy with a hot chocolate, but Michelle and André had frogs legs and snails.

 After most of the tour group broke up and went their separate ways, some of us decided to check out some of the other sights together. So we went to the Eiffel tower to get a close-up view, before checking out the Louvre. Pro tip - they no longer offer discounted entry after 6pm on Friday nights for over 25s. They do, however, still offer free entry for under 26s in that time slot.

We prioritised what we most wanted to see, and after 3 hours we were pretty over walking anyway and had seen what we most wanted to.

 If you were full of energy and had the time you could definitely spend a whole day there. We were not full of energy and didn't have the time. So we found a McDonalds for tea (we had seen McBaguettes advertised that we decided we had to try - they weren't much good) at about 9:30pm. We finished the night watching the light display on the Eiffel Tower and didn't get back to our apartment till after midnight. Like I said, a big day!

We are still recovering, (especially as I got a cold) so I will head off for bed now to cram as much in as possible tomorrow!