For those of you who might have forgotten your history there was a massive evacuation in 1940 of Allied troops from Dunkerque, France, in WWII as they were surrounded by the Germans and pushed to the coast. Troops awaited boats to take them to England on these beautiful beaches.
So today(Sunday, 25 October)Steph and I left from Paris for Dunkerque. We got there, got some Kinderbueno (delicious chocolate) and hit the town...which was absolutely empty and closed down because it was a Sunday. But we were going for the beaches anyway so it didn't really matter.
But it was a beautiful, sunny day!! And finally--a SANDY beach!!
We talked to this guy who was out on the beach with his kids. I asked (in French!) if he spoke English because he asked me something in French and he--like everyone else we've talked to--said "a little." And yet, he proceeded to give us a lovely little history lesson of the Dunkerque evactuation because we told him that's why we came. It's so funny how modest they are..."yeah I speak a little English - let me give you a history lesson!" They're so kind!!!
We drew stuff in the sand, ran around, saw 3 dead jellyfish (totally weird!) and got some shells. The water came up about 35-40 yards while we were there and within the last 5 minutes did a good 10. It would've totally swallowed us up!
When we finally left we wandered around the quiet town. We found an open pastry shop and got Steph the eclair she'd searched for in Paris. It was delicious! We also bought our last huge French baguette because we're sadly addicted to them now!
Back to the train station, got some snacks, and headed off to Brugge, Belgium!! A friendly train guy on our second train gave us instructions to change at a different place for our third train to get to Brugge 30 min earlier. He was soo nice and helpful!
We arrived and waited for a bus to take us to the "Snuffel Stop"--where you tell the bus drivers you want to go and they drop you right at the door of the Snuffel Hostel. It was really nice and laid back, very cool--but of course since it was set up by hippies!
We settled in and got to bed to make the most of our morning.
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