Not much to report from yesterday as I actually came down with a virus & spent most of the day resting…which I'm sure had absolutely nothing to do with the previous days indulgences!! :P No really, unless waffles & chocolate are now linked to ear, nose, & throat viruses I'm pretty sure it was just your average, run-down, travelling kinda bug! However I did still make it out to the Friet museum in the morning (like I was gonna miss that!) to learn all about the history of potatoes & French fries, from different types of potato species to how they came up with the different kinds of sauces to have on French fries & decades worth of French fry packaging. Actually, the Belgians claim that they are technically Belgian fries, but during the war, Americans mistook French speaking Belgians for Frenchmen when they offered them some of their fries, hence the name French fries! We sampled the legendary friet after our tour, & they were pretty damn good! Turns out all that special potato selection & double frying really does work wonders for creating the perfect fry ;)

But after that I felt & kinda looked like a zombie, so I retired to the hostel out of the cold Bruge weather & slept/read for the rest of the day. There's also been a lack of photos recently because I left my battery in Paris & am having issues with the new one I bought…hmm…technical difficulties! Hopefully that'll all be sorted out ASAP! Btw, for those of you who have asked about access to photos on Off Exploring, I'm afraid I'm having all sorts of trouble uploading them to that site - it was really easy last time, but the system's changed now - so I'm afraid I'm only putting them on facebook. If you yourself are not on facebook, chances are there's a kid (i.e., someone born in the 80s + :P) nearby you who is! If they're facebook friends with me see if they can give you a squiz at my pics via their page :)

Anyway, resting up turned out to be a good decision because by this morning I was feeling a million times better & in good shape for our day tour to Flanders! It was an amazing day & we had a fantastic guide who was pretty much a walking encyclopedia on everything relating to WW1! He was a Frenchman named Nathan who had lived in Flanders all his life & had spent years studying the history of the area, particularly relating to the war. Because there was only a small group of us (Esther & I, plus a lovely Canadian couple) there was plenty of opportunity to ask questions & get to see all the kinds of things you don't get to on the bigger tours.

Nathan took us to numerous war memorials & cemeteries - some of which were created while the war was going on, although most soldiers were either buried, or relocated to communal gravesites after the war due to the overwhelming number killed in action. The vast majority were unknown soldiers. He also showed us both German & allied bunkers, bomb shelters, & trenches all across the countryside where the front line pushed back and forth not more than a few kilometers over the few years.

Apparently there are about 40 soldiers' bodies discovered in the fields of Flanders by farmers each year. There is also TONNES of artillery, bullets, shrapnel etc. dug up annually, & new bunkers are still regularly being discovered. Nathan showed us a lot of the things that had been dug up, including some live hand grenades. Yes, that's right, they were live. I know, I thought maybe he was kidding too…or didn't actually mean live LIVE…I actually asked several times to clarify. The conversation went like this:

Me: So that hand grenade we were holding before was a live one?

Nathan: Oh yes absolutely.

Me: Live, as in, will blow up if it's dropped.

Nathan: Hmm…well, about 50% perhaps of the time, yes, absolutely.

Me: Uh huh, right, OK, isn't that a little…uh…dangerous?

Nathan: Oh, only if you're chucking them around you know, if you just pick them up & put them down it's fine.

:O!!! haha Esther & I were like uh…OK! Crazy Frenchman! He reckons they used to play with that kind of stuff when they were kids all the time, you know, when "kids were allowed to be kids" :P Well I enjoy both my arms attached, thank you very much! Haha No, but seriously he was an absolutely fantastic guide, & aside those slight eccentricities, you really did get a very authentic idea about what it must have been like during that time almost a century ago. We even got to take home some bullets & bits of shrapnel with us! He helpfully instructed us not to take it on the plane as hand luggage…I wish I could tell you everything we learned today but I'd be here all night, plus some of it got a little lost in translation (i.e., he pronounced "area" like "Aria" & laughed when we told him that was an Australian music award :P).

Anyway, we are off to Brussels tomorrow & are meeting up with some of the girls I went on exchange with in Vancouver (Helle from Norway & Jessie from Sweden!!) so I'm sure I will have many more exciting tales to report soon! :) Sending you all lots of love & big chocolatey hugs from Belgium xo