Ypres is a lovely little town and our hotel, the Novatel, was right in the heart of the town centre. We only had one night here so after getting our bearings, checking into the hotel, and a bite to eat, we jumped into the car and headed straight for the cemetery. Our visit was a surprisingly emotional one but I'm very glad we made the effort to go. The Commonwealth Wargraves Commission do such an amazing job and treat these special places with such care and attention. This was an hour of my life which I will never forget. Afterwards we decided to go and find a local cache to mark the occasion, but the closest we could see which had instructions in English we could understand was some distance away. Undetered we went for a look and found Heuvelland 3 : Redmond just outside another war cemetery.
Back in town and we joined the 8pm gathering at the Menin Gate to hear the last post being played by the local fire brigade. Apparently they started doing this on 1st of July 1928 shortly after the Menin Gate memorial was completed and aside from a four year break between May 1940 and September 1944 during WWII when Ypres was under German occupation, they have played every evening since the 11th of November 1929.
After the ceremony we took a wander around town and went looking for Fish Market (VisMarkt, Ieper / Ypres). As it's name suggests this was locate in the old fish market area of the town. Today this is filled with bars and clubs which appeared to be where the local youngsters hang out. The cache wasn't too difficult to spot but a bit of stealth was required.
This concluded our holiday and the next day we drove home. In all we cached in France, Luxembourg, Germany, Holland and Belgium and collected 22 caches.
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