(DAY 3)

After a short train ride from Brussels, we arrived in Ypres fairly starving on Thursday afternoon. We hurried to check in at our hotel, found the quickest food we could (a veggie burger!, frites, and beer at the local fast food place), and headed to the tourist information center which is conveniently located in a building you cannot miss: Lakenhalle (Cloth Hall).

The city is much smaller than Brussels (less than 40,000) and has been completely rebuilt since World War I. I wanted to visit to learn more about the war, having mostly forgotten the contents of an undergraduate class I’d once taken called WWI: Canada’s War of Independence. Eric was not initially interested in war history, but became so during our stay. Not hard in a place like this.

As soon as you step foot from the train station, you are stunned by how beautiful Ypres is– then to find out how much damage it suffered in four years and the scope of reconstruction… There was so much to learn we decided to stay two days.

These pics are from wandering around the town and eating out in Ypres: