Today we went to the spot where the battle of Waterloo was fought. Wellington, and Blucher, who where the English, and Prussian marshals, Against Napoleon from France. The battle was on June 18, 1815, with 120,000 French and 240,000 Allied troops! Over 11,000 died that day with 50-70,000 wounded and another 3-5,000 dying from wounds over the next days. The French were routed and this ended Napoleon's reign. He went to exile in St. Helena and died in 1821 there.
Waterloo is about 15 km south of where we live in Brussels. Here is another handstand shot in front of the Lion.
To commemorate where Prince Guillaume of Orange was wounded, there was a HUGE cone mound (40.5 meters high, and 226 stairs to climb it) on the top was a Big lion cast out of all the discarded cannon balls. With our pass we could go to 2 films, climb the mound, a panorama, a wax museum, Wellingtons Headquarters, and Napoleons headquarters. but we didn't get to Napoleons headquarters.
On the left is a picture of a map with the battlefield in the background, and on the right is a picture of the panorama. Red is the Allies and blue are the French.
On the left is a picture of a sign for Wellingtons headquarters, and on tree right is a picture of a plaque of Uxbridge losing his leg by a canon ball and said "I say, I've lost a leg" and Wellington said "by God sir I think you have." I think that was the funniest part of the tour in Wellingtons headquarters.
In the picture on your left I am showing how big those Leaves are. And on the right we are looking at a fancy bakery before going home. It's one of two Belgian bakeries/chocolateries selected for the Shanghai Expo in 2010!
So did the chocolate shop sell little chocolate Uxbridge legs? You should have done a video using ABBA's "Waterloo" as the sound track. Maybe even do a re-enactment of the impossibly stoic leg amputation. It seems par for the course that any time a British officer looses a limb he does so without anesthetic using only a butter knife and cravat as tourniquet. Naturally, they are ready for battle or fox hunting within hours and become irresistible sex symbols to the ladies.
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