It’s lunch time and I’ve just arrived in Ieper which was a major battlefront in WW1.
I first stopped at the American Cemetery in Waregem (just north of Kortrijk) about
which the poem “In Flanders fields the poppies blow…” was written about. That was
quite a place very much different than I had expected. It’s only 6 acres with less than 400 graves, but very peaceful.

There are military cemeteries all along this route. I’ve stopped at two British
cemeteries and a German cemetery. I’ve stopped at monuments to the British,
another to the Canadians, and another to the New Zealanders. Here in Ieper is
what is supposed to be the definitive museum for WW1 in Belgium. It was in
this area that the Germans first used mustard gas as a chemical weapon killing
several thousand soldiers in each attack.

I’ve ordered tomatoes with shrimp and fries for lunch. That sounds a bit strange, but it is quite good. I didn’t want anything as heavy as a steak, but I was also quite hungry. This dish has a couple of tomatoes filled with very tiny shrimp along with all kinds of other rabbit food like watercress, shredded carrots, cucumbers, green beans, shredded cabbage, and lettuce. It’s more like a salad. And, like all meals in Belgium, it’s served with fries.

I’ve not seen a single McDonalds on this small road trip. There may be one here
in this tourist town, but I haven’t seen it. Today is a national holiday and there are lots of people here. Many are speaking English, so I’m not the only tourist in town. Ieper was literally destroyed in WW1 and has been rebuilt. The Flanders Field museum is next door to the restaurant where I’m eating and that’s my next stop.

————————–
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld