Daily Archives: August 15, 2007

August 15 –

We bid goodbye to Brussels and headed out of the city center – not according to my directions, of course, no matter how hard we tried – and headed to the Atomium just north of the city. Built for the 1958 World’s Fair it’s a huge atom-shaped thing that’s 102 meters high and is served by the second fastest lift in Europe moving at 5 meters per second.  The view was spectacular and there was lots of things to look at inside the building.  It was extremely cool and gets a big thumbs up from the family!

We then hit the road for the short trip to Brugge.  We’re in West Flanders now – no French here!  We’re practicing our Dutch since we’ve got 3 days in Amsterdam after this (Alstublieft is please!) We found the hotel with little problem relative to Brussels.  We unloaded the bags, parked the car and were off to see the town.  I have to say that this place is so picturesque it’s nearly nauseating!  And the tourists!  The number of people in the town was unbelievable – and they were all tourists!  I heard more English spoken on the streets today than at any time since Frankfurt.

The market square is actually more impressive, IMHO, than the Grand Place and there are cobbled streets upon cobbled streets where ever you turn.  We got some lunch at a cafe and I was again impressed by the seriousness with which the Belgians take their beer:  although our meals were served on paper plates, we got the proper beer glasses to go with the type of beer we ordered.  Every single beer has it’s own particular glass and it may be okay to serve your brochette and frites on styrofoam but not for your beer!

We wandered about before deciding on a boat tour of the canal.  The driver pointed out that Brugge only has about 1000 years of recorded history and there is actually a hospital from the 13th century that has the wards in tact!  The thousand year old buildings weren’t enough for us though.  We needed to go the Archeology museum to get to the *really* old stuff – and what a well done museum this is!  The entire thing is hands on – although the docent at the ticket booth did warn against touching the lights! – so Gillian was in her element.  The exhibits showed all sorts of things found around Brugge dating from different periods and compared them to modern equivalents.  One of the most striking things for me was the banquet table set with eating arrangements from the 14th through 21st centuries – very well done!

There’s a church on every corner – including a few Basilicas – and we almost made it through the entire day without stopping in one but there was one that we couldn’t resist: Our Lady of the Healing Blood.  Yup, There is a church in Brugge that is famous for having drops of blood from Christ as it poured from his wound.  The reliquary for St. Sebastian’s hand has nothing on this!  There is a HUGE tabernacle behind which the blood is kept.  And of course, you can light a candle there (count: 12).  The most amazing thing about this particular religious house is that the decorations were unbelievable!  The reformed Swiss should be turning in their graves!  There wasn’t one square inch of wall, ceiling or floor space that wasn’t covered with murals, bright paint or other religious decoration.  Not a place where you want to attend mass hung over!  Not that anyone actually does that…. 😉

It was threatening rain on and off and we had to drop in on the only brew pub in town to keep dry… 😉 but when the rain was off we wandered to visit the city gates – which was very cool – and wandered along the canal where there were a few windmills (very Dutch!).  Even though today is a national holiday (Assumption), there were a fair number of shops open and we wandered around them sampling some excellent Belgian chocolates – they might be better than the Swiss!

After a while, we started to look for  dining options.  Unfortunately, since so many of the restaurants cater to the masses of tourists, just about every place had the same basic menu of traditional Flemish dishes all served with frites.  We were pretty much Belgian cuisined out so we cemented our visit by sampling Belgian Chinese food – which was very good!  Better than what we had in Switzerland that’s for sure.  And even the Chinese restaurant serves good beer in the right glasses.  I think I like this place!

/san/

[Pedometer:  19, 083 or about 9.5 miles over really old cobblestones.]

August 14 –

Our first full day in Brussels started with the hotel breakfast; Duncan loved having raviolis for breakfast while the rest of us settled for typical breakfast fare before we headed out for a day of museums. The first one we wanted to visit – the archeology museum – is only open on Wednesdays (?!?) so we headed to stop two: the royal palace. We got there right as the doors opened and we filed inside with the rest of the crowd. This was the first time we had to wait in line for anything since we were in Paris. They didn’t allow any cameras inside so instead of trusting that the “no photographs” sign would dissuade you, they made everyone check their camera! Frank was not pleased to leave his behind but those were the rules.

So we wandered through looking at the rooms on public display, the several dozen portraits of various King Leopolds and the artwork on exhibit. It was mildly interesting until we got to the “Hall of Mirrors” which, unlike the amazing room at Versailles, was a small room for a palace but it was filled with a hands-on exhibit on optical illusions. It was really cool! There was a set of mirrors to put you in the middle of a kaleidescope, an apparent bottomless pit, several computer games and a pretend guillotine. The neatest thing of all though was the amazing luminescent green covering on the ceiling and chandeliers made from 1.4 million beetles wings! It was awesome! The best free tour of the day!

Our wanderings took us passed the cathedral so we stopped in again to see the treasury which was closed last night. This was the best €2 we’ve ever spent! We saw paintings and vestments and reliquaries from the 15th centuries on! The creepiest thing was the reliquary containing the hand of St. Sebastian – which was clearly visible through the glass. Ugh!

Next stop: the Comic Strip museum – our first disappointment of the day. We had read about this in a couple of places and the Frommer’s guide I bought talked about how it was great for kids and adults and mentioned lots of comic heroes that we know and love as well as many more from Belgium. It was pretty expensive as far as museums go and the first exhibit on how comic books are made and how many people are involved was pretty interesting. Then the rest of the museum seemed to be dedicated to the most famous Belgian creation: Tin Tin. Not one I grew up with! I suppose that if we actually spoke French, we would have gotten more out of it since we could then actually read the comics but the English language guide we got described the exhibits in English but that didn’t help since the comics themselves weren’t translated! There was one Beetle Bailey cartoon from 1994….

So we decided to console ourselves with a light lunch (sandwiches and salads) followed by some yummy pastries! Then we were off to the final museum stop of the day: the Beer museum! You would think that a country with 100 breweries creating more than 450 beers in a dozen different styles could do a better job putting together a museum. Alas, it was not to be. This was our second disappointment of the day – and another strike against our guidebook – as the entrance fee got you into a room with some sample brewing equipment and a seat for a 40+ minute movie on Belgian beers. Luckily we could choose to show it in English but that didn’t really matter since all they seemed to be interested in was showing the label of every beer produced in Belgium. We did get to sample a Belgian white beer and we did learn that Kriek is a cherry lambic, of which Frank has now become fond. Otherwise, not worth the price of admission.

As it was close to museum closing time, we didn’t try to squeeze in the chocolate museum but instead ventured out to see Brussels’ most famous resident: Manniken Pis. Yup, the statue of the little boy peeing on the street corner. We had to stop by and get a picture – one that makes it appear that he’s peeing on Gillian’s head of course! This isn’t the original statue – that one is in a safe place; apparently, he has a bad habit of being stolen or subject to “anatomical mistreatment”. Apparently, he does have more than 700 costumes and if we were still going to be here on Thursday, we’d get to see him dressed up as Elvis!  And the shops selling crap (or “keech” as they say in Scotland) is truly unbelievable!  You can get just about anything with the little pissing boy on it:  lace, playing cards, statues, towels, and even chocolate!

We did some shopping and bought some chocolate and lace and yet more earrings! Then some time in a café sampling the local brews (more kriek!) and listening to street performers – a string quintent! Then some quiet time planning our route to Brugge tomorrow before heading out for the evening meal. We decided to give the guide book one more try and check out a recommended restaurant. It was good but nothing great. It was hot inside but at least it as a non-smoking restaurant. Duncan and I tried the carbonnade of beef with stoemp, apparently potatoes mashed with spinach (?!) and Frank had muscles again. We were annoyed by a table of “fellow Americans” a few tables down who were everything that Europeans hate about us. I can tell you that they are from San Francisco; it took them 11.5 hours to fly to Amsterdam; he was in the military stationed in Japan (He loves Kyoto!) and it was their 19^th anniversary. How do I know all this? Dad decided to make small talk with the two Japanese women at the table between us and told them his life story! He waited until he was done smacking and yelling at his youngest son (who was obnoxious and whiney and deserved it!) We really wished we could speak Gaelic!

/san/

[Pedometer: 18,961 or about 9 miles, some of which was spent shuffling past exhibits.