Day 22: Friday 18 April 2014
Today is Good Friday and it is not a public holiday in either Belgium or France. This is surprising given both countries are strongly Roman Catholic. I thought that although it is not a public holiday that there might be some evidence of the religious aspects of the day however that is not the case. Both Ypres & Lille appeared to be business as usual.
One of my many Belgian friends told me that Monday is the public holiday in Belgium but that day has no religious significance at all.
I checked out of the Albion Hotel in Ypres this morning. It really is a very nice hotel and the included northern European breakfast (bread, cheeses, cold meats, eggs etc) set me up nicely for the day. I drove the 60 or so kilometres from Ypres to Lille and after a bit of mucking around I found my hotel, a Novotel Suite hotel, and checked in. A nice modern hotel in that anonymous Novotel sort of way. However the room is very big (by European standards) with a fridge and microwave.
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| City square - Lille |
Not much of a reason to come to Lille apart from it is from where I am catching the train to London tomorrow. (Lille was an industrial city with coal mines in the region around it, since the closure of the mines and the associated heavy industry it has tried to reinvent itself, similar to Glasgow, but hasn't quite got there yet). I dropped the car off and had a walk around the town and lunch in the main square, including a couple of beers with bits of lemon floating in them.
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| Lille |
I maybe off the air for a few days from tomorrow as I am not sure what the wi-fi arrangements will be like at the hotel I am staying at in London. (Last time I was there they were charging about 50 quid per ten minutes of internet time).
I have heard that the reason there is no real celebration of easter is that the belgians are reintroducing the kattenfest and that a whole lot of cats are being bred so that they can once more be ceremoniously chucked off the Cloth Hall tower oh how wonderful. Can you check with the lovely lady at the Albion and se if this is true?
ReplyDeleteHappy Easter
ReplyDeleteI hope you managed to eat some Belgium chocolate it supposed to be the best in the world apart from Lindt?
Nice you are being polite to the bike riders!
Shame about the mussels!
Roger, I recall now that as I was driving past the Cloth Hall there was some people there unloading cages of cats and taking them up the stairs into the cat, sorry, clock tower. I wondered why the Belgians were walking around with smiles on their faces, it was obviously in anticipation of things to come later in the day.
ReplyDeleteJennifer, I still have some Belgian chocolates left and I am rationing myself to one or two a day. Big shame about the mussels, but maybe next time.
Graeme.. dont say such things!!! They wouldnt do that in this day and age
ReplyDeleteLeanne, the Europeans have a different attitude to some of us to cats, they were often considered to bring bad luck and why do you think that witches were often depicted with a cat. Look up cat towers or something similar on the internet.
ReplyDelete