July 21 - Waterloo

We started our day by dropping Julia and Mom off at the train station in St.-Quentin for their day-trip to Paris. For those of you keen on hearing about said day-trip, here's what I've gleaned from their accounts: it was very, very busy. And I'm afraid I don't have any pictures on my camera so I won't be able to help you with that either! Right, moving on... After having a relaxing breakfast at the chateau Dad and I headed north to Belgium and our destination for the day - Waterloo. Waterloo was where, on 18 June 1815, the Duke of Wellington defeated Napoleon in what would be the latter's final battle.

The battlefield is just outside of town and is today home to several tourist attractions. Predictably, we started our visit by having lunch at a lovely fondu restaurant; it was probably our best meal in France! We then toured the Wax Museum and the Panorama (a 360 degree painting of the battle), both of which were very interesting but a little dated.

Next was a battlefield tour on board a vehicle that was part tractor, part bus, and part giant bicycle. It was terrifying, to say the least. The driver drove very, very quickly over bumpy farm tracks so we were bouncing all over the place, but we did see a lot of really neat things. One of the highlights was the Ferme de la Belle Alliance (pictured here), Napoleon's headquarters on the morning of the battle and where Wellington ended the battle by meeting with his ally, the Prussian Commander Blucher.

After the tour we watched a pair of very interesting films before climbing the iconic Lion Mound, a huge conical mound and lion statue dedicated to those who lost their lives in the battle. It stands on the spot where the Prince of Orange, another allied commander, fell during the battle.

We climbed the 226 steps to the top for a fantastic view over the battlefield and the Belgian countryside






Once we were done at the site we drove into the village of Waterloo to visit the Wellington Museum, located in the building where he set up his headquarters before the battle. While there we discovered that it was a national holiday in Belgium so everything else was closed, but the museum itself proved to be very interesting.



We left town in the late afternoon and began the drive back to France (which has much nicer highways than Belgium). We stopped in St.-Quentin for dinner at Flunch, a bistro/cafeteria sort of thing with surprisingly decent food. As we were waiting for the train to come in we visited some of the cemeteries in the area; this one holds the bodies of some 30,000 German soldiers



Once we'd found them at the train station we returned to the bed and breakfast to pack for tomorrow's journey back to England.

GWV