WEEKEND REVIEW JUNE 27

After last weekend's agitated bicentenary Waterloo battle celebrations I wanted to see how the Hougoumont Farm looks without the thousands of visitors.



The new statues which had been unveiled by Prince Charles the week before, stand now at the entrance of the court yard. Inside there are also benches to rest.



Somebody had put a poppy wreath in front of the door, and my friend just had time to call back Charlie who had already lifted his leg !



Inside is a new visitor center and of course you have to pay now to see the farm.



A new (??) or now cleaned plaque was cemented in the wall



I saw the two still standing trees around which the battle took place and you can still see the impact of the bullets from 200 years ago.



At the Lion's mound the tribunes for 60.000 spectators were partly dismantled.



and a new memorial had been placed.

On Sunday Ilona and I went to the Lion mound, she hadn't seen the new site yet.



Some French soldiers were apparently nostalgic, because they had come back for the weekend.



The new visitor center in the underground Memorial museum was now open for all tourists.



 The old one is closed, but the old sign of what you should visit is still there although it is now completely outdated.



We met with Nicole and her daughter on the terrace of the new restaurant and watched the one week too late French soldiers parading by.



There were a lot of tourists climbing up the 223 steps to the Lion and some youngsters were rolling down the hill, which of course is not allowed, but forbidden things are just fun.

We sat there in the sunshine and chatted with tourists from Vienna and the UK, there was a group of Chinese and many French and Belgian tourists too.

We had a lot of fun and finally returned home at 6 pm.

CHARLIE's ADVENTURE

Charlie is my friend Nicole's Golden Retriever and a love of a dog. He often brings us into hilarious situations.

We walked around the Hougoumont farm battle field, looked at the renovated farm and 



arrived at two still standing trees which had seen the bloody battle 200 years ago and were full of bullet holes from this time.



Charlie, as all dogs, loves trees. And discovered a 200 year old hole in it. Of course he had to look inside. You don't find such an old hole every day. Now the entrance was quite narrow and Charlie is not the slimmest dog.



He tried to squeeze himself inside, and Nicole was very worried that he couldn't get out anymore and tried to pull him out by his tail. But Charlie is very stubborn, she could pull as hard as possible, he didn't move, instead he tried even more to get inside. The smells in there must have been delicious.



and he made it ! He was in the hole and we stood outside ! We waited and waited, called and called, but there were so many interesting things to smell at, apparently Charlie was very interested in history !



After at least 15 min, he finally had enough and pushing himself out backwards, he managed to get out after a while ! Nicole was so relieved and I called him Houdini !