August 13 –
Another adventure begins! I started this morning with a quick run – who knew one of the benefits of staying at a hotel in the middle of nowhere is that there is a park with a running trail right next door. Yippee! We showered and breakfasted, handed the bags back out the window, and set off to take care of a few loose ends in Reims before heading out. We visited the Musee Automobile Reims-Champagne which Frank voted as really cool (tres bien!) It has about 150 cars, about 50 motorcycles and a thousand or so toy cars all in this old factory. I found it interesting because there wasn’t the typical collection of old and unique American cars – I’ve been to a few car museums in the States! – this had an interesting assortment of European, especially French, cars which was really neat. There was the obligatory Corvette but otherwise, not a Chevy in sight. Frank just *had* to buy a model – a 1972 Ferrari Dino – for his collection.
We wanted to visit another champagne house, Pommery, but there wasn’t going to be another English tour for more than an hour and we didn’t feel like hanging around quite so long so we were off to fight the Battle of Belgium. I had heard many horror stories about navigating through Brussels and Brugge – the two places we are headed – so I tried my best to be prepared without the aid of Helga. Of course, this meant that I wound up with multiple map books and the laptop with PDFs of Google maps open. (Yup, driving down the road with the laptop open….) Everything was as awful as I had heard! Frank noticed the difference in the roads as soon as we crossed the border – I believe there was a comparison to the Jersey turnpike! Then there was the bad signposts and the fact that we had about 5 maps and they were all TERRIBLE!
We eventually found our way to the hotel without too many tears or swear words but of course it’s on a one way street that has pedestrian bollards up so we can’t actually get there! We dropped the kids and the luggage off and found a car park where we are about 7 levels underground – and not likely to move the car until we actually have to! The price to pay for having a room right off the Grand Place….
Which is WOW! I had heard about it and seen pictures but it really is an awesome square! We didn’t take too much time to explore then because it was time for our 3 p.m. lunch! We hit a stand for the local delicacy of French fries with mayonnaise, with a couple of sandwiches, and some Belgian waffles for dessert. Yum! Then we began our wandering to try to find our way around the place. We explored the Grand Place some more and then wandered off some side streets where we found half a dozen or so stores devoted to animation and other cool collectibles, which kept the boys busy for quite some time! Then we decided to take care of the obligatory visit – the local cathedral!
This one is not called Notre Dame but is dedicated to St. Michael and St. Gudula and is really lovely. It’s the first cathedral we’ve been too this trip that has already been through a complete restoration and it is beautiful. I lit my candle on the St. Michael side (that’s 11) and admired the statues of the apostles that lined the main church. Then we went to the “basement” of the church where there is a display of the original Romanesque church from the 11th century which was uncovered during the renovations. Lots of cool stained glass and other stuff. Very neat!
Then we wandered through the Parc Bruxelles which is also very cool and came out on the side of the Royal Palace. It was closed but is definitely on the agenda for tomorrow. The flag was flying over the building so the King is somewhere in Belgium; I suspect we won’t see him… Then off to find some dinner. We found the area equivalent to the Latin Quarter in Paris where there are dozens of restaurants in a row down small alleyways so all the menus are similar with similar prices. We picked one at random and had the 3 course dinner for €18 and it was okay. Duncan won for the best meal: waterzooï – a soup-like stew with chicken and cream and about a pound of butter!
A few notes on Belgium so far. This is the first place we’ve been to where there seems to truly be a language war. Switzerland has more than one official language but the streets only have one name. Here, every single street sign has the the street name in both French and Dutch – talk about confusing! No wonder I had issues with navigating! So far everyone has spoken French – at least until they figure out how bad our French is and then they switch immediately to English! But I think that Brugge will be more Flemish and be mostly Dutch, we’ll see if I’m right. This is also the first place we’ve been where there has been a noticeable amount of graffiti. I don’t recall seeing any in Zürich and very little in Frankfurt so this is quite a shock.
So we’ll see what tomorrow has to bring…
/san/
[Pedometer: 16, 360 or about 8 miles not including this morning’s run!]
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