| Belgium, May 11 2003 |
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| We all headed off to Belgium for a day trip - that's right, just the day. It is quite cheap to get a car on the eurostar (chunnel) for just a day return. It was about a 3 hour journey from home to destination Ypres. We chose this day specifically for Elaine as Ypres has a 3 yearly cat festival and Elaine loves cats. As you can see, there was an enormous parade celebrating cats, their history, and the history of Ypres (as it was completely wiped out in WWI). On the left is a witch - they showed the burning of witches and their fights with Christians. On the right are beautifully made up cats on quite well behaved horses, although they did pee and the poor dancing children had to dance right through it!!! |
| Like any parade, they had to have the Chinese dragons - beautiful display! |
| They also had commercial vehicles coming through throwing out lollies and all sorts of goodies... |
| On the left you can see the Meningate in the background (and no, I don't know if I am spelling that right). It is a huge war memorial and has the names of hundreds of Australian soldiers who lost their lives in the war - it is really moving. In the foreground, there are a line of flag throwers - the flags are enormous on heavy wooden poles, the dancers swing them round and into the air and then catch them - quite impressive - you can see how high the Italian flag goes. the flags are about 3m by 1m. On the right, a painted tightrope walker... the float is stopped when he walks... |
| And here is Chris, Alison, Mark, Me, Catherine, Elaine and Bruce sitting on the wall behind the Meningate soaking up the sun before the rain set in.... |
| And on our way home, we stopped in Calais for dinner and I had my very first l'escargot - that's right, a whole entree of 6 delicious garlic snails - I ate them all and actually enjoyed them. They won't become a regular thing but hey, they weren't too bad. |
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