May 10th and 11th in words

First, the nitty gritty details: Thursday already feels so long ago! Let us see. We spent Thursday morning packing. After lunch we headed to QNX where we had arranged to meet a taxi. (Thanks Ansen for taking Michael’s car back home!). At the airport we were told that Michael’s backpack was too long for carry on so he repacked his bag and improvised a carry on bag. There was a lot of confusion checking in but the important part is that it was all sorted and we made it to the gate with time for a coffee.

From Ottawa it was a very short (26 minutes) flight to Montreal. Finding the gate in Montreal was almost too easy, it just didn’t seem right that it was that easy. The flight from Montreal to Brussels was 6 ½ hrs and was a pleasant enough flight. Only issue was that Michael somehow didn’t make it on the list to receive a gluten free meal. And apparently he had tea spilled on him but I slept through all of that!

We arrive in Brussels at 2am Ottawa time, 8am local time. Arriving in Brussels was very straight forward, we picked up the rental car – a Twingo and were off. First stop was to  Atomium – “The Atomium is a landmark building in Brussels, originally constructed for the 1958 Brussels World's Fair (Expo 58)”. I have to say that the park where it is situated is absolutely beautiful and the structure itself is fascinating (don’t worry, I didn’t upload all the photos) but we could have skipped the panorama views from the top (along with the line ups).

Next destination was Nieppe, France where our AirBnB is with a side stop to a grocery store that was supposed to carry gluten free products but unfortunately didn’t. The AirBnB is lovely. The owner only speaks french so we are getting lots of practice in. They also have fish in a pond, a cat or two, a dog and, canaries. By this point we were exhausted and took a 2 hour nap.

Around 4:30 we headed of to find Joan’s great uncle. Joan – Michael wants to thank you so very much! Not only was the ride out to the cemetery amazing but the cemetery itself was quite the experience. He enjoyed (not sure that is the right word to use) it immensely.

From there we went to Ypres. We ended up driving right through the Menin Gate (5 minutes later and it would have been closed off) but we couldn’t find any parking near by so ended up having a fair bit of a walk back to the gate. It was amazing how many people were already there for the sunset ceremony. They hold it every night! Since we weren’t going to get prime positions we decided to walk around and explore Ypres first. It’s a beautiful little town. Narrow streets, typical European buildings, and lots of people to watch. We ended up finding a high spot to watch the ceremony from and we were almost the only ones there. It was the perfect end to the day.

I have to add, I was rather impressed Michael’s driving and with our navigation today! The GPS in the car helped a lot but the maps didn’t cover France!  Somehow we managed to get where we needed to go.