Cemeteries, commemorations and chocolates COMPLETED About This Page:

[mcc0313]

Just catching up, what a interesting and historical trip yet a very sombering one....so sad when you think about how many innocent lives lost and so many missing or unidentified....

Your pictures are amazing, and truly catpure the sadness and emotion that is filled throughout these cemeteries and memorials.

The chocolate shop definitely a happy sight thought and those waffles and hot chocolate....they looked delicious.

[cubfancolleen]

Hmmm, PDA at a spot like that? Not in very good taste.
Loved the pictures from today's installment!

[chezp]

Cemeteries, commemorations and chocolates – part nine: don’t give up the ghost on me...

The Lille Gate wasn’t much to look at, but getting had been half the fun. We got a photo of the nearby cemetery....



... then we headed down to the main road to walk to the centre of Ieper. By now, my camera was giving up the ghost with a dying battery, but I was able to squeeze a few more shots out of it as we walked along. If I was quick enough, it didn’t notice that it was on and I could snag a shot or two...


Yay!

And yay again!


Soon, we were back in the main square. Our walk had probably taken us about 35 minutes and had been really nice.



We put our purchases in the car and headed out of Ieper. By now, the car park here was packed, so we’d obviously lucked out and arrived at a quiet time of the day.

Soon we were on our way, although it was quite a while until we got to the motorway.



While on the quieter roads, we went through what was once the border between France and Belgium. It’s odd, the way some of these are still here, more than a decade after all the borders were opened up. Of course, we in the UK like to be the exception to the rule, hence the security at either side of the Channel...



There was some lovely lighting in the sky as we drove back through France, but apart from that, there was very little to see.



Next: well, this is a Disney disappointment...

[Colexis Mom]

Great pictures from Ieper! Beautiful area!

[KMB733]

More beautiful pictures!!

[disney_duke]

What a beautiful building this is:


All that hard work in getting the bricks to make the patterns. Beautiful! I'm glad your camera kept working!

[chezp]

Originally Posted by disney_duke

What a beautiful building this is:


All that hard work in getting the bricks to make the patterns. Beautiful! I'm glad your camera kept working!

I think that was one of my favourites as well.

[chezp]

Cemeteries, commemorations and chocolates – part ten: well, this is a Disney disappointment...

Soon, we were back in Calais and headed first for a pharmacy, as the person I car share with had asked me to get her a couple of things. I was a bit worried about this, as every pharmacy we had seen in Belgium had already closed for the day, but thankfully in France, obviously they stay open later. In I went and managed to get what she wanted in French, albeit with a bit of help from the saleswoman, with her using gestures to ask if I wanted one item in a mouthwash or a spray. I wasn’t sure I’d ever been taught the word for mouthwash, but still I was very proud of myself getting everything done with no use of English.

That done, it was time to go shopping at Cite Europe. This is a huge shopping complex located by the Channel Tunnel. We saw this on the way...



We parked up downstairs, as we wanted to get some gas, as diesel in France is much cheaper than it is at home. However, if you use unleaded petrol, you’re out of luck. It was actually more expensive out here, which surprised me.

We headed inside and first went to the Disney Store. Oh my goodness, what a disappointment. We’ve been in here before and got French merchandise, but there was nothing like that today. There was barely any adult merchandise and certainly nothing with a sad little donkey on it.


Dejected, it was time to hit our other stop for the day, Carrefour. Think the European version of Wal-Mart or Target and you’ve got the idea! In we went and immediately we started finding bargain. We sampled some cheese and it was so nice that I got some and some Brie. Then we got some prawns with some ice and it was time for the wine section.

I wasn’t expecting to get much, except some wine that my dad likes, but the deal they had on White Grenache was just too good to pass up – buy four, get two free! The JP Chenet rose that I’d just started at home and discovered how nice it was was stupidly cheap, at something like €2 a bottle, so we got a box of that as well.

Now to find my dad’s wine... we hunted and hunted and could we find it? I had to ask a shop assistant and wouldn’t you know it? We’d both walked by it about three times and not seen it. We grabbed a box..... Add in a bottle of limoncello (bargain at just €7! ) and we were done... We checked out and it wasn’t too pricey, considering what we had bought...

The next challenge was to get out.... Remember we were on the lower level? Well, there was no way of getting to it by Carrefour, so we headed down a level. We then went out through the doors that I thought were right by where we’d parked, but they weren’t. We had to backtrack and try again and we finally found our area, but we had a bit of a walk to the car. Lesson learnt, we now know where to park to be closer next time...

We filled up with gas at €1.41 a litre, that’s £1.17 – and if I tell you that diesel is currently £1.45 a litre in the UK – you can see what a good deal we got!

Now with everything done, it was time to head for the ferry terminal. Mark commented that we might make the earlier ferry, but I knew from the destination time that Daughter of Tim had given us that there was no way this was going to happen. Sure enough, we made it to the ferry terminal by about 6.55 pm, which was the latest check-in time for the earlier ferry, but then we had a 10 minute wait to clear both sides of immigration, French and then British. That didn’t bother me. I’d rather wait a bit and know that people are being properly checked, especially when they’re heading to the UK. Sadly, from recent news report, it’s become very clear that’s not always been the case... but with the Olympics under five months away, we really need to step things up now and make sure we do all the checks we should be.

Once through those checks, it was on to the check-in window, where the man informed us that our ferry, the 7.55 pm had been cancelled due to a medical emergency, but we were booked on the next one at 8.35 pm. This obviously wasn’t what we wanted to hear, but medical emergencies do happen sometimes and there’s nothing we can do about it.

We drove up and waited to be called to board our boat. This is where the Channel Tunnel scores some serious points, as you have the terminal building to relax in, you can shop in there and, perhaps most importantly, they have toilets. As far as I could see, there was nothing here. I really wouldn’t like to be stuck here for hours and especially not with kids. I couldn’t help but think of all the times there are delays (very often, mainly due to French industrial action... just saying! ). It must be an absolute nightmare to be stuck there for hours on end.

Fortunately, the time went by fairly quickly. We cracked open the choc au pain that we had bought in Carrefour earlier and also had a couple of our Belgian chocolates but resisted the temptation to open the wine unlike others that we saw elsewhere... It was fascinating to people watch as well. There were some pretty crammed cars with five people and the storage areas were packed with all their purchases or luggage. I wouldn’t have liked to been in those.

I settled down to write some trip report and Mark read, saying how glad he was that he had brought his book with him. Before we knew it, we were seeing people getting ready to go and then we were moving....


It’s amazing how many vehicles these boats take, as there were literally hundreds of cars and a fair few lorries and yet as far as we knew, they would all be with us..

Because of our long wait to get this ferry, we were relatively near the front of the line when the time came to board. We were much lower this time than on the way out, which meant more stairs to climb to get to the passenger decks, but we knew the drill from this morning, go straight for the food! We couldn’t see any restaurant listed, which was where I was hoping to dine, so we went for the food court and we beat the crowds, although in truth, they were nowhere near as bad as they had been for breakfast. We guessed that a lot of people had eaten in France and didn’t want anything else.



I was taken by the idea of a vegetable lasagne, but sadly they had run out of that, so that not to be. Fortunately, I managed to find a prawn and mango salad and got some tomato and basil soup as well. I really liked my salad. After the choc au pain we had eaten earlier, it was just what I needed, as I didn’t want anything too filling. However, the soup was a little more spicy than I would’ve liked...



Mark had a curry, which he described as a bit warm....



... we shared some fruit for dessert. We managed to grab a table by the window, although obviously now, being night, there wasn’t much to see outside. After we had finished eating, and it was quite quiet up there, we decided to stay put, with Mark reading and me writing.

When we heard the 15 minute warning of shopping time left (the shop has to close 20 minutes before the ship gets to Dover), we decided to go and have a look at the shop. It was much bigger than the one this morning, but despite that, we didn’t buy anything.

We then had a walk around the whole ship and, in general, I would say that it’s obviously a lot older than the one we had sailed on this morning. This is more how I remember ferries from my last journey on one. I found some information that confirmed that this was an older ship and apparently the Pride of France and the Pride of Britain were the two new boats. They only came into service in 2011 and we had sailed on the Pride of France this morning. All in all though, even though it was older, it was still nice enough and, despite our initial fears that this sailing would be packed with extra people from the cancelled sailing, although it was busy, it wasn’t packed at all.

Soon we were coming into Dover and when we heard the call for the staircase attendants, we got in line, although our guy got lost somewhere along the way and we had quite a wait for him to arrive and open the stairs up. When he did make it, we were behind a family of four and were amongst the first back to our cars.

We had a few minutes to wait before they let us off and we headed for home, getting back about 40 minutes after we left the boat. We offloaded all our purchases and headed for bed. It had been a very long and tiring day, but equally it had been a lot of fun and a very different experience for us, as neither of us had been near a ferry in a long, long time. We’d loved everything we’d seen, particularly in Belgium and it’s a good reminder of how much there is to see and do on the doorstep, and within easy reach of Calais. Hopefully it won’t be too long before we head back there and spend more time exploring what’s on offer on the continent.

Footnote: literally a couple of days after I finished writing this, I got another offer through by email from P&O Ferries. This time, it was for a day trip for £33 including the same six free bottles of wine and the free breakfast. We took ooh probably about 10 seconds to think about it and decide this was a really good offer and we should go for it – so now we’re booked to go again... on Saturday 24 March! We’ve gone for a later ferry out there and a much later one back, so that we can watch the Last Post being played at Ieper. The plan is also to go to the Memorial Museum Passchendaele, which we didn’t make it to last time, so I will be doing a trip report after that day out!

[Dlandmom2]

Great TR, and congratulations on scoring a great deal on the next trip!

[Colexis Mom]

You scored some great deals at Carrefour! Congrats on the new deal for a new trip! Thanks for taking us along for the ride!

[scrappyjae]

Only wished our Target ond Walmarts here sold alcohol, might be able to get a better deal sometimes like you guys did. Sadly not the case around here.

Sounds like you had an awesome day and can't wait to hear about your next trip.

[lauriep]

That was a great short getaway! The new deal you got is fantastic, and now you'll be headed back in a little over two weeks!

[Wendyismyname]

Very cool!!!

[cubfancolleen]

What a great day! And how wonderful to have received an offer for another bargain crossing. I'll look forward to hearing all about how you spend my DH's birthday (March 24)!

[Ace_Athena]

The numbers of fallen service members is just mind boggling. I especially was blown away by the amount of unknown soldiers. Quite sad.

Congrats on the ferry deal! I am looking forward to that TR!