Ads, Mel and Ollie's travels: WW1 battlefields, Belgian Chocolate and Champagne

On the last weekend in May, we did a 5 day trip to France and Belgium. We caught the Eurostar (train) from London to Calais where we hired a car. It was pouring with rain when we got there and continued to rain for nearly the whole day. So this made driving on the right hand side of the road all the more interesting!

We headed over to Dunkirk for a look around and then called in the French version of a Fish and Chip shop - a baguette and frites shop! While we were trying to order, there was a French woman who was trying to help us translating to the chip shop lady. Then would you believe it - she invited us (Melinda and Adam and our friends Damien and Sarah) back to her place to eat!

So after that we headed off to Ypres in Belgium where we crossed our first ever land border. However if we weren't paying attention to the signs on the freeway, we would have totally missed it!

Once in Ypres we checked in to the hotel and checked out the city. We saw a parade of British Army guys at the Menin Gate in the evening where they played the last post and have done every night since 11th of November 1929 'every night and in all weathers'. The only break was when the Germans invaded in the second world war and it was not allowed. However the day that they left, it started again and continues to this day.

British Army marching to the Menin Gate in Ypres

The next day we went on a tour of some battlefields and memorials as well as a few cemeteries. There are many cemeteries dotted all around the Ypres Salient, all neatly maintained. That afternoon we headed back in to France thinking that we would be able to find accommodation wherever we felt like it. Not so! Anyway a few hours later we finally checked in to a hotel in Amiens.

The next day we did some of our own touring around the Somme. It was good to see these areas that you have heard about for years like Villers-Bretonneux where Australian soldiers liberated the town from the Germans. The school there (called L'Ecole Victoria) has a memorial on the wall of the school and it is located in Rue de Melbourne which is just off Rue de Victoria.

The next day we took a drive down to Rheims - the main city in the Champagne region. Plenty of bottles of Veuve-Cliquot, Moet & Chandon and other normally really expensive bottles of champagne on the shelf at the bargain price of €28. We did a tour of the Mumm winery and had some tastings at the end. With neither of us being big champagne fans, it was hard to get excited by the tour guide saying that they had suitable bottle of champagne for all times of the day and for everyoccasionn.