Brussels to Flanders and Ypres Private WWI Battlefields Tour
Depart from your centrally located Brussels hotel in a climate-controlled private vehicle and listen as your guide sets the historical scene for this Viator Exclusive tour. Hear fascinating facts and figures about one of the world’s most destructive wars as you travel through Ghent towards Flanders Fields. Stop first in the town of Diksmuide to see the destructive ‘Trench of Death.’ Before arriving there, you will cross first the famous Railway Dike and stop at Our Ladies' Corner, so that you can realize how important the flooding, organized by the Belgian Army, was. In St. Julien, the monument to the Canadian Forces venerates the victims of the first Gas attack in 1915. Continue your visit at Essex Farm, where John Mc Crae wrote his renown poem ‘In Flanders Fields’. Then visit the Tyne Cot cemetery (the biggest Commonwealth Military Cemetery in the world). Here 13.000 men lay at rest, and there is also the wall of 35.000 names of men who are still "missing". The terrible battles, known as the 3rd battle of Ypres or of Passchendaele, have made so many victims from both sides. You can visit the Memorial Museum Passendaele 1917 (not included), and make a small visit to Polygone Wood and cemetery (some 2000 headstones).Via Wijtschate, you will arrive at the famous Pool of Peace, the biggest mine crater filled of water in Flanders. Continue to Messines - with the monument for the Christmas Truce, and drive down the hill to have a fantastic view on both the Irish tower and the New-Zealand memorial, built where once the German trenches were. You will make a stop at the Irish peace park and your visit there will end in Ploegsteert, with stops at the Memorial to the Missing, the Commemoration Plaque for Winston Churchill and in the fields where the "Christmas Truce" took place in 1914. Back at Ypres at around 6:15pm, you will have some free time for dinner (not included) and at 8pm precisely, you will attend the Last Post Ceremony at the Menin Gate Memorial, where 55.000 names of missing military men are mentioned. After the end o the ceremony, your guide will drive you back to Brussels, where you will arrive at approximately 9:30pm.
