Brugge Photo Post #4 - Ostende and Ypres

[hils]

Lots of interesting and fun stuff today. We spent the morning in Ostende which is a lovely seaside resort. It also harbours a lovely 3 masted sailing ship called the Mercator. It's not quite from the Age of Sail, having been built in 1932 but it still looked cool. We got to take a full tour of the ship and I took lots of photos. In the afternoon we went to Ypres which was a major first world war battle site. Pretty much the whole city was flattened during the conflict and then rebuilt in the 1920s. You can hardly tell when you're looking at it. We went to one of the mass grave site and it's just impossible to process. How do you comprehend a war that killed 17 million people. It was quite moving stuff. Back to England tomorrow. This holiday has flown by



Ostende Cathedral




The Altar


Pretty rose window


I love the artwork on this building


Naval memorial


Me at the beach


The Mercator








Hils at the helm






And at the mini helm




The radio room




Ship's bell


Ship's anchor




Seaman's cabin


Wardroom


Painting of the ship


Model of the ship


Surgeon's room


Hospital room. ARCHIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!




Hammocks


Captain's cabin


More of the Captain's cabin


Ostende station


A tower


A French Grave site at Ypres


A battleground


Entrance to the graveyard


A German bunker


Grave of a man who won the Victoria Cross


A selection of the graves


Ypres town hall


The Menin Gate. It lists 54,000 names of those missing in action and this is only half of them. They ran out of room


Ypres Cloth Market


The tower on the cloth market


Ypres Cathedral


The altar


Rose window


Shrine