Day 3...From Brussels to Lille with Chocolate..and some love

Good morning to everyone, well actually its 10 PM this evening and we have had a great day once more.  I know that this may not be that exciting for you guys as it for us, but we are about to start the bulk of the trip and the Remembrance portion of our trip will begin tomorrow so I hope to let you into our world and the reasons why we do this…Now back to today’s events….

What I love about this trip to this point is that we built the time to get acclimatized as I mentioned yesterday and the kids really appreciate it.  This morning we are off to the chocolate factory after a relaxing late wake up call….7:00 AM…for TOSH standards that is pretty late(ordered a 6:30 AM for tomorrow).

ON the way to the Grand Place to view the history of chocolate. 

Before we get there Tom, our tour director, is telling us more about the country of Belgium and reverts back to the royal family and the recently abdicated King.  Turns out he also had his pension affected by recent changes to the pension fund I guess….maybe not just making that part up, but the King while in power had a salary of 11 million euros per year.  Well after giving up his throne for his son, is not happy with he pension.  Now I don’t want to get into apolitical discussion about what is happening on PEI, but hey if the King of Belgium is being affected then we should compare.  Actually, I guess I shouldn’t feel so bad about my pension going forward, because the former King of Belgium is now forced to live on only 750,000 Euros after earning 11 million in his last year as king!!!  I guess that we should simply accept what is given to us and move on!  Haha…just trying to make light of a situation! 

 

Back to the tour.  The kids have spent about an hour in the chocolate museum and  have been able to sample the very thing that has made Belgium world famous, cocoa!!!  We get to see the history of the industry originating from Latin America and Africa…and even back then the most powerful names in the industry were Nestle and Lindt.  We are even glad to hear that chocolate is healthy, actually most of us know that, but the healthy stuff usually doesn’t come in Easter bunnies or Cadbury’s cream eggs.  We have all decided to understand it is this way…Bitter equals healthy, scrumptious equals happy, hips(as in big ones), hippos, and just generally anything we can think of that seems the opposite of healthy, but we are happy because it tastes much better than the 100% pure chocolate.   So you can just imagine the one that we all chose to sample…..

After another little while in the Grand Place of Brussles, we get to see a number of weddings at city hall and then we are off to Lille, which is our first excursion into France.  As I have mentioned to the kids in the past, and Tom is doing the same now, the European union has allowed pretty free travel between the 28 member countries and therefore we are not stopped at any border and we simply see the sign that says “Bievenue a France”…very similar to the sign that says welcome to Tignish or Welcome to Morell!!!

After a couple of hours we arrive in Lille and of course it is pouring rain…once again the kids are awesome and most of us are dressed for it.  Although I told the kids we have very little free time on the trip, we actually have a little more than expected and with what is planned for the next 3 days it is a good thing.  Lille is the 4^th largest city in France and has a beautiful Grand Place as well, actually this one is named after a favorite son of the city of Lille, none other than the French general of WWII fame and former French president Charles DeGaulle. 

After a couple of rainy hours of wandering and seeing the sights, and Charlie, Jordan, Jayk and Alex trying to converse with “beautiful young French women” as Charlie described it,  we head to our hotel for another relatively early evening.  Tomorrow morning will come early and plus the Bruins are on so I need to watch them beat the Leafs!!  My apologies for a less than stellar report tonight but I promise more fun tomorrow.  I also want to give a big shout out to the Kinkora group who are also having a great time and wait till you hear what they are doing are our cemetery tomorrow…definitely stealing that idea for next time!....also to our Ontario group, who are led by Maki Katsube, who were are finding PEI connections all of the time because he is an X grad!!!  Take care all and chat tomorrow!!!  Feel free to send kids messages in the comments section and I can pass along to the kids!!