Gent & Ypres

We spent two lovely days in the city of Gent. Parked up at the edge of the rowing lake, it has a fab chip shop at the entrance. The first day we sourced the laundromat, a near 300 metres across the road. Parked up next to a british van we headed into the city for the day. What an amazing city, with loads of history. We walked in, as it has an emissions zone and arrived over St Michael’s bridge. The view below overlooking a beautiful canal and start of the old town. People sat lining the canals, feet overhanging the waterways. In the distance all you can see are the towers of churches. The Belfry, City Pavilion building and St Bavos Cathedral all centre pieces off a beautiful square. Two castles, the castle of counts at nearly 1000 years old. And the Castle of Gerald the Devil, where he and his wife are buried in the crypt of St Bavos Cathedral. The old fish market and its amazing statue on top of Neptune. You could spend hours here walking all the streets. We thought Antwerp is nice but this is so much better. We headed back to the motor home after a good few hours of walking the old town. We met up with a family of Kiwis who have just travelled Africa and are now embarking on Europe for 10 weeks. What a fab opportunity and way to learn about the world for their two children. We all stayed two nights and in the end there was 4 of us, two lots of kiwis, one british and one Welsh. All swapping, where the laundry & lidl was, as well as info between us. Motorhoming at its finest. Today we headed to Ypres and the famous Menin gate, we are currently parked a couple of hundred metres from the Commonwealth cemetery for the 1st world war. We found one unnamed kiwi grave and paid our respects. The menin gate makes you speechless at the 54, 000 names carved into it who have no grave. The sheer loss of life, incomprehensible and the desemation of this town that has rebuilt itself over the many years since. The most interesting thing for us was the amount of Canadian and Australians that defended and died in this area. The maple leaf carved into so many headstones. The last post is played at the Menin gate at 8pm every night. So tonight we will go and pay our respects for those who fought to protect so many others…. tomorrow into France and off to the vets for pet passport stamps.