Paris

Dieppe

Iepers (Ypres) and to the coast

Waterloo

M and M lived quite close to Waterloo, so it only made sense to check the famous site of Napolean's last battle. We went to both the Lion Hill Monument/Vistor's Center/Wax Museum/Panorama and the museum at Le Calliou farm. Check out the link to Waterloo in this blog's links list for the historical details if you like (note the left side where you can choose "Preface to the battle" and "the Battle", but I'll give a brief summary here too. Actually, I'm going to come back to this later - just made way too many errors which took way too long to fix because I am way too tired...stay tuned.

Brussels, Belgium

We drove on to Brussels to find Mats and Maj-Stin who we had met in Sweden and had invited us to visit. They had come to meet us in Stopafors at Christmas time after reading about a Canadian family (us) living and playing hockey in the area. They had lived in Canada before, and Mats still goes there for business yearly. Turns out we have a mutual friend in Prince George! Anyway, we took them up on their very kind offer, and spent 3 lovely days with them exploring the area and enjoying their hospitality. Mats plotted out a walking tour of the heart of Brussels for us and the following pictures are from that day.

World War 1 Monuments in Northern France

We flew from Nykopping to Beauvais near Paris on Ryanair - a discount airline which had very strict baggage limits. It was LOTS of fun having to weigh everything we had in the process of packing up (note the sarcasm). We rented a car at the airport and then drove north toward Belgium. Before leaving Canada, my Aunt Jane had given us a package of information about two of her dad's uncles who had fought and died in WWI and been buried in northern France. It had been our plan since getting that information to search out their graves. Since Vimy was also in the same area, we wanted to see the Canadian monument there as well. We managed to find the Wailly Orchard Cemetary and the grave of Newman Hall Campbell. The following pictures were taken there.(You can click on the pictures to zoom in and see the inscriptions better). The cemetary was small, but immaculate - obviously well cared for. We wrote in the visitors book and found Aunt Jane's comments from 2003 on the first page. I have included both a picture of the grave we came to see as well as a picture of the grave of an unknown soldier - there were a number of these - which we found particularly moving.





We headed on toward the cemetary at Villers where the other brother Colin Stanley was buried. Unfortunately, we didn't find the cemetary before dark although we did find the town of Villers. But as we drove around, we did find the Canadian Vimy Ridge monument which was being prepared for the Easter day ceremony. We arrived as the sun prepared to go down and a storm approached. The white monument was spectacular in that light and the bitter wind almost took our breath away. It gave us an appreciation for what the soldiers had endured on that ridge.

Touring Stockholm

We spent a couple of days wandering around Stockholm. The first picture shows the royal palace from across the water at dusk. The picture below is in the old town. It shows the view from the place we ate lunch. Dates on the buildings across the square were from the 1600s. There is a hotchocolate shop on the ground floor of the red building

One of the highlights of our visit to Stockholm was seeing the changing of the guards at the royal palace. This drum band was a part of that process and was very impressive. We all watched for the whole show despite cold fingers and toes.

We stayed in a hostel on an island across the water from the palace. Here we are on the bridge to that island with the palace in the background. The hostel itself was a neat old building. We stayed in a room on the top floor and had a great view of the harbour. If we had come in the summer, the hostel also has a boat that moors out front on which guests can stay. The last picture on the page shows that hostel -

Globen arena in Stockholm

Of course going to Stockholm would not have been complete without checking out the Globen arena - Stockholm's famous globe shaped arena. Luckily for us Djurgarden was playing one of their last games of the season while we were in town. Magnus managed to find some tickets for this game, and we had a wonderful evening with him watching a very exciting game (Djurgarden won in overtime).