yes, we're still here..
just still recovering from our belgian blog.
Debbie is still working and enjoying it. I'm still working and not entirely enjoying it - life is as normal. :-)
I've been put full time on a data warehousing project which is interesting. I'm learning a lot but the data warehouse is in Microsoft's SQL server rather than oracle, leading me to be glad I have a foam frustration brick sitting on my desk.
anyway, until next time.
Monday 28 April 2008
Saturday 12 April 2008
Andrew and Debbie Invade Belgium (part 3 of 3)
This is the third part of our three part blog about our invasion of Belgium.
In order for it to make sense, it's probably a good idea to read part one and two first:
Click here for Part 1
Click here for Part 2
We had tossed up the idea of us making our own way to Amsterdam after the tour had been canceled. but we decided against it for a number of reasons. mostly because we didn't know how to get there or back. but also because we still hadn't seen much of brussels except the area around the Grand Place.
So after a slightly better night sleep and a hearty breakfast, we set out to see as much of Brussels as we could. Seeing as we really didn't know much about it, we started off at a Meuseum right in the middle of the grand place.
As meuseums go, it was a fairly small one, you can see the size of the building from the above photo and it didn't really go much deaper than 20 meters so we got through it by about midday. In a way I was sort of disapointed. or I guess dissilusioned about meuseums in general. There was lots of statues and paintings and bits of architecture left over from before when the Grand Place area was destroyed. the plaques would say things like "this is the only remaining part of the original xyz famous building before it was burnt down. it has subsequently been rebuilt to the exact same specifications as previously" and so pretty much we could have just stayed outside and looked up and seen the exact same piece of building except not cracked and burnt....
It wasn't all that bad though. there were some great scale models of Brussels back when they had a wall around the entire city and some cool old books and stuff that we couldn't read because we don't speak belgish.... So we probably only ended up spending about an hour in there. but as our tour guide told us the day before: there are more than 80 meuseums in Brussels.
we also walked arround the grand place area a bit more:
yes, ok, we love this building:
Found a sculpture where people had put gas masks on them, I assume as a comment on increasing polution:
After a quick argument about what we were going to eat for lunch we went somewhere neither of us liked and ate some salad.... it gave us energy though and with a quick glance at our map of brussels, we headded off towards the royal palace.
we walked through a very nice park that would look absolutely amazing in the spring/summer but was a bit bland without any flowers or leaves on the trees. so we only took one photo:
We were amazed by the cobled streets - we kind of expected them in Gent and Brugge and in the mostly pedestrian area of the Grand Place etc, but to see them pretty much on every street in the middle of the city was mind boggling.. not to mention difficult to walk on and noisy as the cars go past. in the third video that we made, you can hear the tires screaming out for mercy as they drive over the cobble stone roads....
the palace wasn't all that much to see really, in fact it was quite a boring looking building compared to a large portion of the other buildings and churches around the place.
so we took a few shots there and moved onto the justice courts, a massive building at pretty much the highest point in the city.
On the way we came across a meuseum of musical instruments, a town-hall-looking building, a massive church, and a garden that was enclosed with statues representing each profession.
I tried my best to hide the tramline that was accross the middle of the otherwise cool shot, see if you can pick it:
here's the garden with the statues of each profession/trade:
Sadly, I did not see a computer programmer represented. I'll have to have a stern chat with brussels management...
Finally reaching the justice courts we spent a few minutes taking in the views and taking video and stills of the beautiful city. we could see the tall building in the Grand Place, we could see the Basilica de Koekelberg that we drove past the previous day, and we could faintly see the Atomium, Which we knew existed but we knew nothing about.
courts of justice - a more extravigant building and almost as large as the royal palace:
war memorial:
Building in the Grand Place as well as the atomium
Basilica de Koekelberg:
After a bit we looked at our watches. it was only 2:00pm so debbie said: "well, let's go to the atomium". I was kind of reluctant, but I couldn't think of any decent reason not to apart from the fact that we don't speak french and may have dificulty catching the train, it looked like a long way off and we hadn't had a decent lunch yet. still, after quite a bit of convincing from debbie, I agreed. So we set off for the nearest train station.... and we got about 2 meters before debbie panicked that we were going the wrong way, I assured her that we were not.... 5 frustrating map-turning minutes later and we were off again (in the same direction I might add). I think that this moment defined our travel habits. We annoy eachother when we're on holidays sometimes because we get frustrated with the other's shortcommings, but the truth is, if it was just me on holidays, I'd probably sleep in until 12 and not actually go and see anything much. and if it was just debbie on holidays, then she'd probably head off somewhere completely in the wrong direction from the thing she wanted to see.... and so we decided we complimented eachother quite nicely in these areas and took the train hand-in-hand to the atomium.
Google map here
We actually thought that the Atomiom was a fairly recent (like less than 10 years) addition to belgium, but it turns out that it was built for the 1958 world expo. right in the middle of the space age. it's a model of an iron crystal maginfied 165 billion times. the spheres are 18 meters in diameter, the tubes are 23 meters long and 3 meters in diameter and the whole thing stands at 102 meters tall. so of course we just had to try the coffee at the top.
We took the elevator to the top floor, it was quite funny because there was an elevator person pushing the buttons for all the tourists and they had to translate a quick commentary on the elevator including stats on how fast it goes, the fact that at the time it was built it was the fastest elevator in the world, the height of the atomium and how long it would take to get to the top, all in three diferent languages and under the 15 or so seconds it takes to get to the top, it was quite an impressive feat.
At the top was an amazing view of the country side. There were interactive touch-screens that were linked to external video cameras so you could zoom in on places of interest arround the countryside and recieve a commentary about them. We unfortunately couldn't get in past all the kids that were hogging them. a suprising number of them were being taught patiently by parents who were showing them the various sights and explaining what each of them were. one particular parent caught my ear when he kept repeating what sounded like "notre dame", I couldn't obviously understand the rest becuase it was in french. I thought notre dame was in some other country
a quick web search revealed that there are four bacilicas in Belgium called Notre Dame something-or other...
"mini europe"
There's that basilica again:
anyway, so we still hadn't had a decent lunch so we walked up right to the very top where the resturant is, hoping for a good meal, but expecting it to be expensive. the waiter was the perfect look-down-his-nose french-speaking tuxedo wearing type. quite facinating to watch really, here's a rough transcript:
us: "could we have a table for two please?"
him: *thick french accent* "you want a table?"
us: "yes please, for two"
him: *looking down his nose* "right this way sir"
so we waited at the table for a while and stared at the menu, which only had drinks on it.
us: "is there a food menu?"
him: "a food menu sir?" *distainful raised eyebrow*
us: "yes please do you serve any meals at all?"
him: *exasperated look* "this is not possible sir, the lunch is finished, there will be no more food until dinner"
us: "oh, ok we'll just order drinks then"
so we order a hot chocolate and I order a cafe latte
him: "you want a coffee... with milk?"
me: "yes please"
him: "ok" *smirk*
so out comes debbie's hot chocolate and my black coffee with a jug of milk on the side. Well, I thought I'd had all possible weird combinations of coffee, but I never thought someone would give me milk on the side. The Latte with the straw and swizzle stick I had in sloane square is still the leader of course.
in anycase the coffee was actually very good and the waiter warmed up to us a bit after he realised that we would be actually spending money. they must get heaps of people just wanting to come up to take photos. all in all, it was a very fun experience. it cost us 18 euro for both of us to get in and another 6ish for the coffee and hot chocolate, but hey... We're only in Belgium once this year.
We got back to the hotel at about 5:00pm, having not eaten properly yet. we quickly freshened up and went out in search of some food.
We walked around quite a bit trying to decide, and ended up at a nice italian place about 10 meters away from our hotel. Debbie went for a standard bolg and I couldn't decide between all the pizza offerings.. (well, mostly I couldn't read what they were) so I asked the waiter which was his favourite, and he listed about 3 or 4 and said that the last one was his all-time favourite - a 4-cheese pizza. but said that I may or may not like it so much... so I said "is that your favourite? the cheese pizza?" he said yes, so I said "great! I'll have that one". and it was certainly delicious. I think there was even blu-vein cheese in there, it was so flavoursome.
afterwards, we walked around the block, going past the cool-looking building in the Grand place we said "this is the last time we're going to see this at night time"... we kept on walking and eventually came around to it again and said to ourselves "this is the last time we're going to see this building at night time." anyway, this time it really was as we found a waffle place :-) we went back to our hotel (about 10 meters from the waffel place, did I mention how great a hotel location we got?) to eat:
I couldn't fit anymore than a bite in, but it certainly was the best waffle I've ever tasted. Debbie ate the rest and we went to sleep!
anyway, now's about the right time to watch video three:
Andrew and Debbie Invade Belgium (the movie!) Part3
So the final day, we got up early, packed a bit and went down to eat breakfast. We had a bit of a mix up with the payment of breakfast and had to pay a second time (we had paid for all three days worth of breakfast on the first day when we checked in, but the lady seemed a bit new.) anyway, eventually we found the original receipts and we got a refund for the second payment. which brings us to the Howie Associates London Branch Travel Tip Three: Always keep your hotel receipts in a safe place until you check out, particularly in a place where you don't speak the language.
Howie Associates London Branch Travel Tip Four was identified on the way to the eurostar station: make sure you double, triple check the station you know you want to go to with the station name on the train platform. We should have taken the orange line heading towards "Delacroix", but instead we managed to catch the yellow line to "Debroux". The human tendancy to look at the first and last letters of each word and assume the rest caused us to go six stations in the wrong direction before we realised where we were.
However, because of my obsessive-compulsive habit of taking an estimated time to do something and adding another 50% on top, we arrived in plenty of time at the eurostar station and had time for a quick cup of tea before checking in.
.
Now I was determined this time to time how long it took to get through the chunnel, We got to Lille again and I knew it was only a short while to go..... and then I woke up inside the chunnel.... so I don't know how long it takes unfortunately. We'll see what happens when we go to France in June.
phew! finally finished the blog - it's only taken me 3 weeks... I think that after mum, dad, nathan, jill and sophie come over and our week long trip to france I'm going to have to take the rest of the year off to blog about it....
Final thoughts:
If you have to walk on cobblestones all day, take very good walking shoes or hiking boots. We had sore calves by the time we got back to London.
We thought that although it was a very short visit and it was pushing it budget wise, especially since we've got a week long trip to france in two months time, it was very much worth it. This was our first trip to europe and the 4th country that we've been in. But it was so much more, it gave us confidence, it made us feel like we could do anything and go anywhere. I guess that since everyone spoke english, or at least understood it, it was a "safe" couple of cities to travel to, but it was an important step for us, knowing that we can go to a place and find our way around.
It was interesting analysing our feelings coming back. on the train on the way home, I was really looking forward to everyone speaking my language without an accent again. I was really looking forward to "going home" if you like, I guess I was homesick. Then, when we got to London, everyone spoke with a thick English accent..... We weren't quite home yet...
In order for it to make sense, it's probably a good idea to read part one and two first:
Click here for Part 1
Click here for Part 2
We had tossed up the idea of us making our own way to Amsterdam after the tour had been canceled. but we decided against it for a number of reasons. mostly because we didn't know how to get there or back. but also because we still hadn't seen much of brussels except the area around the Grand Place.
So after a slightly better night sleep and a hearty breakfast, we set out to see as much of Brussels as we could. Seeing as we really didn't know much about it, we started off at a Meuseum right in the middle of the grand place.
As meuseums go, it was a fairly small one, you can see the size of the building from the above photo and it didn't really go much deaper than 20 meters so we got through it by about midday. In a way I was sort of disapointed. or I guess dissilusioned about meuseums in general. There was lots of statues and paintings and bits of architecture left over from before when the Grand Place area was destroyed. the plaques would say things like "this is the only remaining part of the original xyz famous building before it was burnt down. it has subsequently been rebuilt to the exact same specifications as previously" and so pretty much we could have just stayed outside and looked up and seen the exact same piece of building except not cracked and burnt....
It wasn't all that bad though. there were some great scale models of Brussels back when they had a wall around the entire city and some cool old books and stuff that we couldn't read because we don't speak belgish.... So we probably only ended up spending about an hour in there. but as our tour guide told us the day before: there are more than 80 meuseums in Brussels.
we also walked arround the grand place area a bit more:
yes, ok, we love this building:
Found a sculpture where people had put gas masks on them, I assume as a comment on increasing polution:
After a quick argument about what we were going to eat for lunch we went somewhere neither of us liked and ate some salad.... it gave us energy though and with a quick glance at our map of brussels, we headded off towards the royal palace.
we walked through a very nice park that would look absolutely amazing in the spring/summer but was a bit bland without any flowers or leaves on the trees. so we only took one photo:
We were amazed by the cobled streets - we kind of expected them in Gent and Brugge and in the mostly pedestrian area of the Grand Place etc, but to see them pretty much on every street in the middle of the city was mind boggling.. not to mention difficult to walk on and noisy as the cars go past. in the third video that we made, you can hear the tires screaming out for mercy as they drive over the cobble stone roads....
the palace wasn't all that much to see really, in fact it was quite a boring looking building compared to a large portion of the other buildings and churches around the place.
so we took a few shots there and moved onto the justice courts, a massive building at pretty much the highest point in the city.
On the way we came across a meuseum of musical instruments, a town-hall-looking building, a massive church, and a garden that was enclosed with statues representing each profession.
I tried my best to hide the tramline that was accross the middle of the otherwise cool shot, see if you can pick it:
here's the garden with the statues of each profession/trade:
Sadly, I did not see a computer programmer represented. I'll have to have a stern chat with brussels management...
Finally reaching the justice courts we spent a few minutes taking in the views and taking video and stills of the beautiful city. we could see the tall building in the Grand Place, we could see the Basilica de Koekelberg that we drove past the previous day, and we could faintly see the Atomium, Which we knew existed but we knew nothing about.
courts of justice - a more extravigant building and almost as large as the royal palace:
war memorial:
Building in the Grand Place as well as the atomium
Basilica de Koekelberg:
After a bit we looked at our watches. it was only 2:00pm so debbie said: "well, let's go to the atomium". I was kind of reluctant, but I couldn't think of any decent reason not to apart from the fact that we don't speak french and may have dificulty catching the train, it looked like a long way off and we hadn't had a decent lunch yet. still, after quite a bit of convincing from debbie, I agreed. So we set off for the nearest train station.... and we got about 2 meters before debbie panicked that we were going the wrong way, I assured her that we were not.... 5 frustrating map-turning minutes later and we were off again (in the same direction I might add). I think that this moment defined our travel habits. We annoy eachother when we're on holidays sometimes because we get frustrated with the other's shortcommings, but the truth is, if it was just me on holidays, I'd probably sleep in until 12 and not actually go and see anything much. and if it was just debbie on holidays, then she'd probably head off somewhere completely in the wrong direction from the thing she wanted to see.... and so we decided we complimented eachother quite nicely in these areas and took the train hand-in-hand to the atomium.
Google map here
We actually thought that the Atomiom was a fairly recent (like less than 10 years) addition to belgium, but it turns out that it was built for the 1958 world expo. right in the middle of the space age. it's a model of an iron crystal maginfied 165 billion times. the spheres are 18 meters in diameter, the tubes are 23 meters long and 3 meters in diameter and the whole thing stands at 102 meters tall. so of course we just had to try the coffee at the top.
We took the elevator to the top floor, it was quite funny because there was an elevator person pushing the buttons for all the tourists and they had to translate a quick commentary on the elevator including stats on how fast it goes, the fact that at the time it was built it was the fastest elevator in the world, the height of the atomium and how long it would take to get to the top, all in three diferent languages and under the 15 or so seconds it takes to get to the top, it was quite an impressive feat.
At the top was an amazing view of the country side. There were interactive touch-screens that were linked to external video cameras so you could zoom in on places of interest arround the countryside and recieve a commentary about them. We unfortunately couldn't get in past all the kids that were hogging them. a suprising number of them were being taught patiently by parents who were showing them the various sights and explaining what each of them were. one particular parent caught my ear when he kept repeating what sounded like "notre dame", I couldn't obviously understand the rest becuase it was in french. I thought notre dame was in some other country
a quick web search revealed that there are four bacilicas in Belgium called Notre Dame something-or other...
"mini europe"
There's that basilica again:
anyway, so we still hadn't had a decent lunch so we walked up right to the very top where the resturant is, hoping for a good meal, but expecting it to be expensive. the waiter was the perfect look-down-his-nose french-speaking tuxedo wearing type. quite facinating to watch really, here's a rough transcript:
us: "could we have a table for two please?"
him: *thick french accent* "you want a table?"
us: "yes please, for two"
him: *looking down his nose* "right this way sir"
so we waited at the table for a while and stared at the menu, which only had drinks on it.
us: "is there a food menu?"
him: "a food menu sir?" *distainful raised eyebrow*
us: "yes please do you serve any meals at all?"
him: *exasperated look* "this is not possible sir, the lunch is finished, there will be no more food until dinner"
us: "oh, ok we'll just order drinks then"
so we order a hot chocolate and I order a cafe latte
him: "you want a coffee... with milk?"
me: "yes please"
him: "ok" *smirk*
so out comes debbie's hot chocolate and my black coffee with a jug of milk on the side. Well, I thought I'd had all possible weird combinations of coffee, but I never thought someone would give me milk on the side. The Latte with the straw and swizzle stick I had in sloane square is still the leader of course.
in anycase the coffee was actually very good and the waiter warmed up to us a bit after he realised that we would be actually spending money. they must get heaps of people just wanting to come up to take photos. all in all, it was a very fun experience. it cost us 18 euro for both of us to get in and another 6ish for the coffee and hot chocolate, but hey... We're only in Belgium once this year.
We got back to the hotel at about 5:00pm, having not eaten properly yet. we quickly freshened up and went out in search of some food.
We walked around quite a bit trying to decide, and ended up at a nice italian place about 10 meters away from our hotel. Debbie went for a standard bolg and I couldn't decide between all the pizza offerings.. (well, mostly I couldn't read what they were) so I asked the waiter which was his favourite, and he listed about 3 or 4 and said that the last one was his all-time favourite - a 4-cheese pizza. but said that I may or may not like it so much... so I said "is that your favourite? the cheese pizza?" he said yes, so I said "great! I'll have that one". and it was certainly delicious. I think there was even blu-vein cheese in there, it was so flavoursome.
afterwards, we walked around the block, going past the cool-looking building in the Grand place we said "this is the last time we're going to see this at night time"... we kept on walking and eventually came around to it again and said to ourselves "this is the last time we're going to see this building at night time." anyway, this time it really was as we found a waffle place :-) we went back to our hotel (about 10 meters from the waffel place, did I mention how great a hotel location we got?) to eat:
I couldn't fit anymore than a bite in, but it certainly was the best waffle I've ever tasted. Debbie ate the rest and we went to sleep!
anyway, now's about the right time to watch video three:
Andrew and Debbie Invade Belgium (the movie!) Part3
So the final day, we got up early, packed a bit and went down to eat breakfast. We had a bit of a mix up with the payment of breakfast and had to pay a second time (we had paid for all three days worth of breakfast on the first day when we checked in, but the lady seemed a bit new.) anyway, eventually we found the original receipts and we got a refund for the second payment. which brings us to the Howie Associates London Branch Travel Tip Three: Always keep your hotel receipts in a safe place until you check out, particularly in a place where you don't speak the language.
Howie Associates London Branch Travel Tip Four was identified on the way to the eurostar station: make sure you double, triple check the station you know you want to go to with the station name on the train platform. We should have taken the orange line heading towards "Delacroix", but instead we managed to catch the yellow line to "Debroux". The human tendancy to look at the first and last letters of each word and assume the rest caused us to go six stations in the wrong direction before we realised where we were.
However, because of my obsessive-compulsive habit of taking an estimated time to do something and adding another 50% on top, we arrived in plenty of time at the eurostar station and had time for a quick cup of tea before checking in.
.
Now I was determined this time to time how long it took to get through the chunnel, We got to Lille again and I knew it was only a short while to go..... and then I woke up inside the chunnel.... so I don't know how long it takes unfortunately. We'll see what happens when we go to France in June.
phew! finally finished the blog - it's only taken me 3 weeks... I think that after mum, dad, nathan, jill and sophie come over and our week long trip to france I'm going to have to take the rest of the year off to blog about it....
Final thoughts:
If you have to walk on cobblestones all day, take very good walking shoes or hiking boots. We had sore calves by the time we got back to London.
We thought that although it was a very short visit and it was pushing it budget wise, especially since we've got a week long trip to france in two months time, it was very much worth it. This was our first trip to europe and the 4th country that we've been in. But it was so much more, it gave us confidence, it made us feel like we could do anything and go anywhere. I guess that since everyone spoke english, or at least understood it, it was a "safe" couple of cities to travel to, but it was an important step for us, knowing that we can go to a place and find our way around.
It was interesting analysing our feelings coming back. on the train on the way home, I was really looking forward to everyone speaking my language without an accent again. I was really looking forward to "going home" if you like, I guess I was homesick. Then, when we got to London, everyone spoke with a thick English accent..... We weren't quite home yet...
Friday 11 April 2008
Andrew and Debbie Invade Belgium (part 2 of 3)
This is the second part of our three part blog about our invasion of Belgium.
In order for it to make sense, it's probably a good idea to read part one first:
click here
...After dinner, we walked out of the resturant into the snow! it hadn't yet started piling up on the ground, but it was falling quite heavily. we got to our room and took some video of the snow falling on street. unfortunately we didn't bring any toothpaste, the hotel didn't have any and all the shops were closed so we just brushed our teeth with the toothbrushes and agreed we'd go out first thing in the morning to get toothpaste.
Debbie did some experementation with different settings on the camera:
We turned on the TV and saw a bit of Harry Potter except it was all in french, on another channel was cliffhanger - I never realised that Sylvester Stalone spoke french either.... We ended up finding Catch me if you can in English and watched that.
We had dificulty with the bed. the springs weren't very good or something. I spent the first few hours squirming arround. I felt as though I was on a slope and I didn't have very much room, being right on the edge of the bed and constantly rolling in towards the middle. Finnaly I sat up and saw that debbie was practically sleeping right in the middle of the bed, so I woke her up and told her to go sleep on her side of the bed.. this fixed both the sleeping area and the slope problems and we both promptly went to sleep.
So we woke up bright and early on Tuesday morning... well, early at least. took a bit of video and some photos of the most beautiful city skyline that we'd ever seen:
We couldn't enjoy it for too long because we had to get to the tour place by 8:45am in order to be in time for our free tour of Gent and Brugge, The breakfast buffet at the hotel opened at 7am and the corner store opened at 8:30. so in a beautifully executed operation we dragged ourselves out of bed at 7:30, got ready and started eating by 8:00, I was standing at the door of the chemist when the owner came to unlock the door at 8:30, bought some toothpaste and got back to the hotel at 8:40, we cleaned our teeth and rushed to the tour place which was about 10 meters away from our hotel door (did I mention what an excellent location our hotel was in?) and got there right on the dot of 8:45 despite having a rotten night sleep. Which brings us to the Howie Associates London Branch Travel Tip number Two: A really full stomach is a good temporary cure for lack of sleep.
Pretty soon after we arrived at the tour place, an American couple and their son arrived also. At about 9:00, the lady from the tour place walked us to the bus, there were a couple of people waiting outside also. When we got to the bus, it was already half full, there was about 30 people in total. The tour guide came along, asking each of us which language we spoke, the majority was English and then suprisingly Spanish, so nearly everything he said from then on was first in english and then again in Spanish.
The bus started off and we got to see a lot of Brussels itself, from the city centre, to the CBD with modern buildings, to a bit of the residential area. the tour guide occasionally told us interesting, but not very memorable, facts about the city. on the way out of the city, we drove past Basilica Koekelberg (or "La basilique de Koekelberg") where they were having an expo of davinci's work - quite a beautiful church, and unfortunately we didn't have time to visit.
La Basilique de Koekelberg
There was heaps of snow on the ground, and being the first day that we'd ever seen snow we were absolutely mesmerised by it, we actually saw people making snow-men!
Well, after what seemed like a short trip we arrived at Gent. "this town puts the Gent back in Elegant" said the tour guide...
Basically gent is made up of a whole bunch of churches and beautiful buildings and a canal or two. it really is an elegant town. The tour guide took us past town hall and to one area where there were three large churches within about 100 meters of eachother. We went inside one (unfortunately we weren't able to take photos inside). it was absolutely amazing.
cool church:
Arround the back, behind where the pulpit would be was this amazing set of scupltures and behind that was a walkway that went entirely arround the back of the church. it contained little alcoves that had sculptures or paintings and sometimes crypts etc... very beautiful.
After this church, the tour guide said that we had some free time (about 1 hour) and then we had to all be back at the bus ready to go at 11:30. At this point Debbie and I started getting annoyed at eachother though - We wanted to see the castle and so I was walking fast so we could get to the castle and back in time and debbie was walking slow and taking video of everything.... it was frustrating for both of us. anyway, we did eventually make it to the castle and got back just in time.
other random churches and buildings:
us-shots:
one of my favorite shots of the whole trip:
Really cool looking castle:
Next stop was Brugge. Brugge is sort of like an island, surrounded by a moat and intersected by canals. apparently it's called the Venice of northern Europe. Well, it certainly was beautiful.
This time, there was basically a guided tour all the way so we stuck with the tour guide. It is really hard to describe the city, everything is beautiful. the city council a long while back made a restriction on building new buildings and it has really paid off. they get 3 million tourists a year comming through the town. I'm finding it really hard to describe the town because of the large number of beautiful old buildings. it was like the entire town was a meuseum, with cobbled streets literally everywhere (we didn't see even one bitchimen road), horse and carts clip clopping down the roads and swans floating peacfully on the canals.
I didn't get one decent shot of a swan.. they were all camera shy:
Our first stop was in a convent garden area,
there were signs up all arround the place requesting silence. Well, all our stomachs must have been growling too loudly so the tour guide took us to lunch. We had one hour to eat and the tour guide said that this place (a local pub/resturant) was the only place that could feed so many people within an hour.
They were certainly efficient at it. there was a set three-course menu as well as a more expensive normal menu. the difference in cost was really significant. one steak from the normal menu cost the same as a three course meal from the set menu. and so we ordered from the set menu. I had some vegetable soup and steak for the entree and main, debbie had sort of cheese cakes and a beef stew for hers. the menu only said "desert" which turned out to be chocolate mousse. (this is the same as the other resturant we went to the previous night, where it said "desert" and we got chocolate mousse also... we thought that perhaps it was a belgian thing).
So just before we ordered, the waiter asked us what we'd like to drink, and the tour guide happened to be walking past and said "the local beer is absolutely excelent", and so we ordered a local beer each.
We found out later that a large number of the belgian produced beers are actually brewed by monestaries (including the one we had which came from Abbaye de Leffe (the Abbey of Leffe)). back ages ago before they had propper sanitisation and clean water (we're talking hundreds of years back) beer and wine were the only germ free beverages available, and so it was the mandate of the monestaries to brew the beer to a certain standard (remember friar tuck from the robin hood story?). a tradition that has continued to this day dispite the water being clean. Belgium has over 400 brands of beer. some are fruity, some are spicy, they're all different and can vary in taste as much as a light white wine varies to a heavy red. ..and I bet you thought Australians liked beer eh? well, as the tourist guide said: "Australans like beer so much, you must have all been born in Belgium!".
random cool shot:
Next up was a church..
and in this one we were allowed to take photos so we did. inside was the only sculpture done by Michelangelo outside italy (Michelangelo was the orange one with the nunchucks) the "Madonna and child" which didn't really look all that much different from the other sculptures that we had seen through the other churches. There was also some monks doing their cool singing (debbie managed to catch both the sculpture AND the singing on video at the same time) and a very very extravagant Pulpit.
Pulpit:
A plaque an the wall said this about the pulpit:
"In earlier times, the Word of God was proclaimed from this pulpit, whose sides are decorated with pictures from the gospels and relevant texts. Below, Wisdom is symbolically depicted. The sounding-board is decorated with medalions of the four latin church fathers and crowned with a representation of truth."
We spent so much time looking at the sculpture and listening to the music and taking photos etc that we suddenly looked arround and our tour group had gone! we quickly ran out, but couldn't see them, and my sense of direction which had worked so well up until this point, failed me. so debbie suggested that we look at the map.... What a preposterous idea I thought initially! but it worked! and we found our tour group just about to cast off on a boat tour. We managed to hop on in time and we were treated to a mostly peacefull boat trip allong the canals. I say mostly peacful because the driver had this loud speaker that he used to tell us about stuff on the sides of the canal, he spoke perfect english and what sounded (to us) like perfect spanish, but the words sounded somewhat contrived, like we were listening to an advertisement for the city. We guessed that if you did 30 min boat tours all day every day, you'd end up saying the exact same thing every trip.
this building here:
can you see the round holes in the tower bits of the previous photo? these were for carrier pidgeons to enter.
originally, most of the buildings were built like this one: as was the style at the time in most of europe including London.
but due to what happened in 1666 in London, designs changed to using stone. this was the only wooden building that we saw in all of brugge.
After the boat tour (which finished at the same place it started) the tour group got the pleasure of seeing some lace being made by hand at a lace shop. It's quite facinating; the Lacer (a word we made up to indicate someone who maces lace) has a series of about 20 bobins that she weaved over and under eachother in an intricate pattern to create the lace. it must have taken years of practice to get to the level of skill and dexterity that she had. The technique must have been passed down as a tradition from mother to daughter for as long as Brugge has been making lace. Unfortunately, I couldn't help but thinking that it was a task that could easily be automated by a machine and done in a fraction of the time, with next to no skill.... but hey, I'm a computer programmer, what do I know about thousand year old traditions....
after that, we had 30 mins spare time where we could do what we like, the tour guide suggested either the main square or a really old pub, we'd be going through the main square later on anyway so we went to the pub to find a bathroom. We sat at the bar for a bit and the tour guide came up and we started chatting. Turns out he's actually french, but he speaks 10 languages fluently including Japanese. quite amazing really.
Afterwards we went to the main square for a bit where this massive bellfry is and then we all piled on a local bus to get back to the tour coach and then most people actually went to sleep on the coach during the ride home.
the belfry:
Debbie and I went straight back to the hotel after we arrived back in brussels. we were both hungry and tired, I said, let's just have a nap for 10 mins and so we both crashed on the bed. an hour later we got up and went out to the Grand Place again to find some food.
We walked arround the streets surrounding the Grand Place for a while, trying to decide what we wanted to eat. Finally we came across the oposite end of the alley way where we had eaten the Escargot the previous night. The first resturant had a very persuasive waiter out the front who asked if we spoke french or english. He enthusiasticly explained how good the menu is and how there was an open fireplace inside and a spare table next to it. We said that yes, it looked good, but we havn't seen all our options, we'll be back. he said that this is what everyone said and he'll give us a free glass of champaign each. so we said ok :-) the resturant turned out to be very nice. we got our free champaign and a seat next to the open fire. the food was very well cooked and came out quite quickly. I had fish soup for entree and salmon for main, debbie had prawns and steak. again, we got chocolate mousse for desert. the menu here was 18 euro each, but it was quite worth it. Halfway through the meal, a blak domestic cat, obviously owned by the manager of the store walked down the stairs and looked hopefully at us and spent the next few minutes moving between tables staring wishfully up at the diners.
Debbie made the observation that we were all being "categorized"
Now would be a great time to watch the second video. as with the other, you may want to hit pause and go make another cup of tea :-)
Andrew and Debbie Invade Belgium (the movie!) Part2
In order for it to make sense, it's probably a good idea to read part one first:
click here
...After dinner, we walked out of the resturant into the snow! it hadn't yet started piling up on the ground, but it was falling quite heavily. we got to our room and took some video of the snow falling on street. unfortunately we didn't bring any toothpaste, the hotel didn't have any and all the shops were closed so we just brushed our teeth with the toothbrushes and agreed we'd go out first thing in the morning to get toothpaste.
Debbie did some experementation with different settings on the camera:
We turned on the TV and saw a bit of Harry Potter except it was all in french, on another channel was cliffhanger - I never realised that Sylvester Stalone spoke french either.... We ended up finding Catch me if you can in English and watched that.
We had dificulty with the bed. the springs weren't very good or something. I spent the first few hours squirming arround. I felt as though I was on a slope and I didn't have very much room, being right on the edge of the bed and constantly rolling in towards the middle. Finnaly I sat up and saw that debbie was practically sleeping right in the middle of the bed, so I woke her up and told her to go sleep on her side of the bed.. this fixed both the sleeping area and the slope problems and we both promptly went to sleep.
So we woke up bright and early on Tuesday morning... well, early at least. took a bit of video and some photos of the most beautiful city skyline that we'd ever seen:
We couldn't enjoy it for too long because we had to get to the tour place by 8:45am in order to be in time for our free tour of Gent and Brugge, The breakfast buffet at the hotel opened at 7am and the corner store opened at 8:30. so in a beautifully executed operation we dragged ourselves out of bed at 7:30, got ready and started eating by 8:00, I was standing at the door of the chemist when the owner came to unlock the door at 8:30, bought some toothpaste and got back to the hotel at 8:40, we cleaned our teeth and rushed to the tour place which was about 10 meters away from our hotel door (did I mention what an excellent location our hotel was in?) and got there right on the dot of 8:45 despite having a rotten night sleep. Which brings us to the Howie Associates London Branch Travel Tip number Two: A really full stomach is a good temporary cure for lack of sleep.
Pretty soon after we arrived at the tour place, an American couple and their son arrived also. At about 9:00, the lady from the tour place walked us to the bus, there were a couple of people waiting outside also. When we got to the bus, it was already half full, there was about 30 people in total. The tour guide came along, asking each of us which language we spoke, the majority was English and then suprisingly Spanish, so nearly everything he said from then on was first in english and then again in Spanish.
The bus started off and we got to see a lot of Brussels itself, from the city centre, to the CBD with modern buildings, to a bit of the residential area. the tour guide occasionally told us interesting, but not very memorable, facts about the city. on the way out of the city, we drove past Basilica Koekelberg (or "La basilique de Koekelberg") where they were having an expo of davinci's work - quite a beautiful church, and unfortunately we didn't have time to visit.
La Basilique de Koekelberg
There was heaps of snow on the ground, and being the first day that we'd ever seen snow we were absolutely mesmerised by it, we actually saw people making snow-men!
Well, after what seemed like a short trip we arrived at Gent. "this town puts the Gent back in Elegant" said the tour guide...
Basically gent is made up of a whole bunch of churches and beautiful buildings and a canal or two. it really is an elegant town. The tour guide took us past town hall and to one area where there were three large churches within about 100 meters of eachother. We went inside one (unfortunately we weren't able to take photos inside). it was absolutely amazing.
cool church:
Arround the back, behind where the pulpit would be was this amazing set of scupltures and behind that was a walkway that went entirely arround the back of the church. it contained little alcoves that had sculptures or paintings and sometimes crypts etc... very beautiful.
After this church, the tour guide said that we had some free time (about 1 hour) and then we had to all be back at the bus ready to go at 11:30. At this point Debbie and I started getting annoyed at eachother though - We wanted to see the castle and so I was walking fast so we could get to the castle and back in time and debbie was walking slow and taking video of everything.... it was frustrating for both of us. anyway, we did eventually make it to the castle and got back just in time.
other random churches and buildings:
us-shots:
one of my favorite shots of the whole trip:
Really cool looking castle:
Next stop was Brugge. Brugge is sort of like an island, surrounded by a moat and intersected by canals. apparently it's called the Venice of northern Europe. Well, it certainly was beautiful.
This time, there was basically a guided tour all the way so we stuck with the tour guide. It is really hard to describe the city, everything is beautiful. the city council a long while back made a restriction on building new buildings and it has really paid off. they get 3 million tourists a year comming through the town. I'm finding it really hard to describe the town because of the large number of beautiful old buildings. it was like the entire town was a meuseum, with cobbled streets literally everywhere (we didn't see even one bitchimen road), horse and carts clip clopping down the roads and swans floating peacfully on the canals.
I didn't get one decent shot of a swan.. they were all camera shy:
Our first stop was in a convent garden area,
there were signs up all arround the place requesting silence. Well, all our stomachs must have been growling too loudly so the tour guide took us to lunch. We had one hour to eat and the tour guide said that this place (a local pub/resturant) was the only place that could feed so many people within an hour.
They were certainly efficient at it. there was a set three-course menu as well as a more expensive normal menu. the difference in cost was really significant. one steak from the normal menu cost the same as a three course meal from the set menu. and so we ordered from the set menu. I had some vegetable soup and steak for the entree and main, debbie had sort of cheese cakes and a beef stew for hers. the menu only said "desert" which turned out to be chocolate mousse. (this is the same as the other resturant we went to the previous night, where it said "desert" and we got chocolate mousse also... we thought that perhaps it was a belgian thing).
So just before we ordered, the waiter asked us what we'd like to drink, and the tour guide happened to be walking past and said "the local beer is absolutely excelent", and so we ordered a local beer each.
We found out later that a large number of the belgian produced beers are actually brewed by monestaries (including the one we had which came from Abbaye de Leffe (the Abbey of Leffe)). back ages ago before they had propper sanitisation and clean water (we're talking hundreds of years back) beer and wine were the only germ free beverages available, and so it was the mandate of the monestaries to brew the beer to a certain standard (remember friar tuck from the robin hood story?). a tradition that has continued to this day dispite the water being clean. Belgium has over 400 brands of beer. some are fruity, some are spicy, they're all different and can vary in taste as much as a light white wine varies to a heavy red. ..and I bet you thought Australians liked beer eh? well, as the tourist guide said: "Australans like beer so much, you must have all been born in Belgium!".
random cool shot:
Next up was a church..
and in this one we were allowed to take photos so we did. inside was the only sculpture done by Michelangelo outside italy (Michelangelo was the orange one with the nunchucks) the "Madonna and child" which didn't really look all that much different from the other sculptures that we had seen through the other churches. There was also some monks doing their cool singing (debbie managed to catch both the sculpture AND the singing on video at the same time) and a very very extravagant Pulpit.
Pulpit:
A plaque an the wall said this about the pulpit:
"In earlier times, the Word of God was proclaimed from this pulpit, whose sides are decorated with pictures from the gospels and relevant texts. Below, Wisdom is symbolically depicted. The sounding-board is decorated with medalions of the four latin church fathers and crowned with a representation of truth."
We spent so much time looking at the sculpture and listening to the music and taking photos etc that we suddenly looked arround and our tour group had gone! we quickly ran out, but couldn't see them, and my sense of direction which had worked so well up until this point, failed me. so debbie suggested that we look at the map.... What a preposterous idea I thought initially! but it worked! and we found our tour group just about to cast off on a boat tour. We managed to hop on in time and we were treated to a mostly peacefull boat trip allong the canals. I say mostly peacful because the driver had this loud speaker that he used to tell us about stuff on the sides of the canal, he spoke perfect english and what sounded (to us) like perfect spanish, but the words sounded somewhat contrived, like we were listening to an advertisement for the city. We guessed that if you did 30 min boat tours all day every day, you'd end up saying the exact same thing every trip.
this building here:
can you see the round holes in the tower bits of the previous photo? these were for carrier pidgeons to enter.
originally, most of the buildings were built like this one: as was the style at the time in most of europe including London.
but due to what happened in 1666 in London, designs changed to using stone. this was the only wooden building that we saw in all of brugge.
After the boat tour (which finished at the same place it started) the tour group got the pleasure of seeing some lace being made by hand at a lace shop. It's quite facinating; the Lacer (a word we made up to indicate someone who maces lace) has a series of about 20 bobins that she weaved over and under eachother in an intricate pattern to create the lace. it must have taken years of practice to get to the level of skill and dexterity that she had. The technique must have been passed down as a tradition from mother to daughter for as long as Brugge has been making lace. Unfortunately, I couldn't help but thinking that it was a task that could easily be automated by a machine and done in a fraction of the time, with next to no skill.... but hey, I'm a computer programmer, what do I know about thousand year old traditions....
after that, we had 30 mins spare time where we could do what we like, the tour guide suggested either the main square or a really old pub, we'd be going through the main square later on anyway so we went to the pub to find a bathroom. We sat at the bar for a bit and the tour guide came up and we started chatting. Turns out he's actually french, but he speaks 10 languages fluently including Japanese. quite amazing really.
Afterwards we went to the main square for a bit where this massive bellfry is and then we all piled on a local bus to get back to the tour coach and then most people actually went to sleep on the coach during the ride home.
the belfry:
Debbie and I went straight back to the hotel after we arrived back in brussels. we were both hungry and tired, I said, let's just have a nap for 10 mins and so we both crashed on the bed. an hour later we got up and went out to the Grand Place again to find some food.
We walked arround the streets surrounding the Grand Place for a while, trying to decide what we wanted to eat. Finally we came across the oposite end of the alley way where we had eaten the Escargot the previous night. The first resturant had a very persuasive waiter out the front who asked if we spoke french or english. He enthusiasticly explained how good the menu is and how there was an open fireplace inside and a spare table next to it. We said that yes, it looked good, but we havn't seen all our options, we'll be back. he said that this is what everyone said and he'll give us a free glass of champaign each. so we said ok :-) the resturant turned out to be very nice. we got our free champaign and a seat next to the open fire. the food was very well cooked and came out quite quickly. I had fish soup for entree and salmon for main, debbie had prawns and steak. again, we got chocolate mousse for desert. the menu here was 18 euro each, but it was quite worth it. Halfway through the meal, a blak domestic cat, obviously owned by the manager of the store walked down the stairs and looked hopefully at us and spent the next few minutes moving between tables staring wishfully up at the diners.
Debbie made the observation that we were all being "categorized"
Now would be a great time to watch the second video. as with the other, you may want to hit pause and go make another cup of tea :-)
Andrew and Debbie Invade Belgium (the movie!) Part2
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