Ieper; Sunday, 27 March, 2016

Breakfast completed I headed over to the impressive Cloth Hall to have a look around the In Flanders Fields museum.

The museum tells the history of the war, starting at the end of the period known as the Belle Époque and how the tensions had built up over Europe that lead to the outbreak of the war. The museum then takes you through the main events that took place in and around Ypres.

It is an incredibly moving, and in places emotionally draining, museum but also massively engaging, so much so that I’d lost all track of time and by the time I exited the museum almost three hours had elapsed.

I wandered across town to the Stedelijk Museum which is more of a general museum about Ieper before wandering back onto the ramparts and heading back round to the Grote Markt. As I wandered along the ramparts it became increasingly obvious that the weather was about to take a turn for the worse, so when I got to the square I found a nice café under cover and settled down for a quick drink and a late lunch, just before a spectacular cloudburst took place.

By the time it had stopped raining it was starting to get quite late so I headed back to the hotel to freshen up and then headed back out to the Menin gate for that evenings Last Post ceremony (the 30,262nd such ceremony) before stopping at a different café in the square for a light dinner and then heading back to the hotel to pack