{"id":372,"date":"2005-07-21T05:35:26","date_gmt":"2005-07-21T12:35:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/?p=372"},"modified":"2005-07-25T06:04:51","modified_gmt":"2005-07-25T13:04:51","slug":"ieper-belgium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/?p=372","title":{"rendered":"Ieper, Belgium"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img src='wp-content\/uploads\/kotr522a_01.jpg' alt='In Flanders Field Museum' align=\"center\" \/><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s lunch time and I&#8217;ve just arrived in Ieper which was a major battlefront in WW1.<br \/>\nI first stopped at the <a href=\"wp-content\/uploads\/kotr389a.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">American Cemetery in Waregem<\/a> (just north of Kortrijk) about<br \/>\nwhich the poem \u201cIn Flanders fields the <a href=\"wp-content\/uploads\/kotr831a.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">poppies<\/a> blow&#8230;&#8221; was written about. That was<br \/>\nquite a place very much different than I had expected. It&#8217;s only 6 acres with less than 400 graves, but very peaceful.  <\/p>\n<p>There are military cemeteries all along this route. I&#8217;ve stopped at <a href=\"wp-content\/uploads\/kotr436a.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">two<\/a> <a href=\"wp-content\/uploads\/kotr489a.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">British<\/a><br \/>\ncemeteries and a <a href=\"wp-content\/uploads\/kotr510a.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">German cemetery<\/a>. I&#8217;ve stopped at monuments to the <a href=\"wp-content\/uploads\/kotr532a.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">British<\/a>,<br \/>\nanother to the <a href=\"wp-content\/uploads\/kotr482a.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">Canadians<\/a>, and another to the <a href=\"wp-content\/uploads\/kotr497a.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">New Zealanders<\/a>. Here in Ieper is<br \/>\nwhat is supposed to be the definitive museum for WW1 in Belgium. It was in<br \/>\nthis area that the Germans first used mustard gas as a chemical weapon killing<br \/>\nseveral thousand soldiers in each attack. <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve ordered tomatoes with shrimp and fries for lunch. That sounds a bit strange, but it is quite good. I didn&#8217;t want anything as heavy as a steak, but I was also quite hungry. This dish has a couple of tomatoes filled with very tiny shrimp along with all kinds of other rabbit food like watercress, shredded carrots, cucumbers, green beans, shredded cabbage, and lettuce.  It&#8217;s more like a salad. And, like all meals in Belgium, it&#8217;s served with fries. <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve not seen a single McDonalds on this small road trip. There may be one here<br \/>\nin this tourist town, but I haven&#8217;t seen it. Today is a national holiday and there are lots of people here. Many are speaking English, so I&#8217;m not the only tourist in town. Ieper was literally destroyed in WW1 and has been rebuilt. The Flanders Field museum is next door to the restaurant where I&#8217;m eating and that&#8217;s my next stop. <\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8211;<br \/>\nSent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s lunch time and I&#8217;ve just arrived in Ieper which was a major battlefront in WW1. I first stopped at the American Cemetery in Waregem (just north of Kortrijk) about which the poem \u201cIn Flanders fields the poppies blow&#8230;&#8221; was written about. That was quite a place very much different than I had expected. It&#8217;s &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/?p=372\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Ieper, Belgium<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-e-mail-musings","category-travels","category-world-war-one"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pnKxs-60","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}