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
Andrew and Debbie invade Belgium (part 1 of 3)
Well, here it is, our blog about our trip to Belgium. I'll warn you in advance: This is by far our longest blog. There is a bit over 30 mins of video, quite a few photos and heaps of writing. Youtube doesn't allow videos longer than 10 minutes so we've made 3 10(ish) min videos.
We've broken it down into sections so you can take it in a few smaller bits corresponding with each video we've done or do it all in one sitting if you wish. so here it is:
So we bought 240 euro for the trip which cost us just under 200 pounds. our plan was to spend no more than 30 euro each per day on food and other stuff. This turned out to be somewhere between 50 and 100 euros under what we really needed.
Monday (London to Brussels)
So this was our first time on the Eurostar. It was extremely easy to get. We had ordered our tickets, accommodation and tour online so all we did when we got to St Pancras international was stick our credit card in the machine and the tickets printed out for us. We arrived about 1 hour before the train was due to depart, this allowed us a bit of time for a coffee before embarking. Checking in was really easy and passport control was very quick. After a quick bag scan and a stamp on our passports, we were off!
We were both carrying a backpack and also had one small weeled suitcase. we found this was heaps for a three night stay, and even allowed us a bit of room for souvenires.
So as we pulled out of the station, it started snowing. Even though we were missing out, we didn't mind of course - brussels without snow would be better than London with snow, we were sure! The train took about 20 mins to get to the chunnel and I estimate about 30 minutes to go through it. I didn't really take note of the time that we came out so I'm not sure exactly. after about 1.5hrs we made a quick stop at lille and then another 20 mins and we arrived at Brussels midi.
Now, I'm ashamed to say it, but the first thing that we did on arriving in Brussels was to eat at their equivalent of Mcdonalds..... they call it "quick" but it's pretty much the same as the golden arches. Now that I think about it, I didn't see a McDonalds anywhere during our stay!
Next was a short ride on the local trains ("The Metro") which were like London's tubes, but not quite so tube-like.... this was very easy, the ticket guy at Brussels Midi spoke good english and gave us a colour coded map and some good directions to where we wanted to go. Probably about 15 mins on the train and we arrived at Centraal Station. The stations were suprisingly close together, and as we found out later on, Brussels, despite being the capital of Belgium and the headquarters of the Euorpean Union, it is actually a really small city. Its population is only 1.1 million. That's about half of Brisbane, and 1/14th of London.
Arriving at Centraal, we came out to street level and it was snowing!!! Debbie took some video at this point (shown in the first video below). I need to explain why I was looking so exasperated in the video: We had just been on the train for two hours from London, had the stress of taking a local train with everything in either French or Dutch (it was easy, but still stressfull), we were carrying heavy backpacks and I was carrying a heavy suitcase which I just finished dragging up a flight of stairs. It was cold and wet and debbie was standing in the open with our expensive video camera and getting rained/snowed on. I just wanted to get to the hotel room, I told debbie that she could stand in the snow all she wanted to AFTER we put our bags down, but no... she wanted to video it right there and then.... I guess it did make good footage, and I guess it was our first real experience with snow, so if she can forgive me for being tired and stressed, I can forgive her for being over-excited :-)
so... We saw snow! this is our first time actually walking through snow! unfortunately I was too focused on finding the hotel to really enjoy it. Debbie kept walking really slow and stopping every now and then to try to find where we were. I had memorized the map from central to our hotel so I was getting more frustrated every minute.
"it's this way! come on..." I would say
"hang on... how do you know, are you sure?" debbie would reply
Andrew: "for the third time... yes! we're looking for the curvy building, can you see a curvy building here?"
Debbie: "well, no.."
Andrew: "that's because it's around the corner"
*a very very short distance later*
Debbie: "this area is kinda curvy"
Andrew: *Exasperated stare* "Debbie... are ANY of these buildings ANYTHING like the curvy one we saw on the map?"
Debbie: "... uh... not really...."
Andrew: *storms off in the correct direction*
Neverthless we did end up going past a really cool church, but we didn't stop for photos. We figured we'd go back later on when we weren't carrying backpacks and the sky wasn't raining ice.
Anyway, we eventually got to the hotel and checked in. When we got up to the room we were amazed! it was on the top floor on the corner of the building so we had views of Brussels in two directions! out of one window we could see the big building that forms part of the Grand Place - it was absolutely spectacular.
(Normally at this point I'd put in a picture, but now that I look through all the photos we didn't actually take any from the hotel room until the night time. but there is a video from the room of course :-) )
Hotel reception gave us a note from the tour organisation that we had arranged to go with for a day trip to Amsterdam on tuesday. it said that unfortunately due to the fact that we were the only people booked on the trip, the tour had been cancelled and we would recieve a full refund. They offered us a free tour of Gent and Brugge as concilation. In hindsight, we were both glad that we went to see Gent and Brugge rather than Amsterdam because the tour was exausting and going all the way to another country would have brought us back to our hotel at about 9pm. We'll go back to Holland another day.
So Next we went out to the streets and headed to the Grand Place. the 'A' in each of Grand and Place is pronounced like the 'A' in "bark". so we instantly saw that we made a very good choice of Hotel. we couldn't have picked one closer to the centre of town. We walked through allyways, arcades, squares, The shops were mostly Chocolate shops, lace shops, waffle places, tourist-type shops or local resturants. there was the occasional clothing shop and there was a whole section of about 6 or 7 shops in an arcade that only sold leather clothes. the highlight of course was that it was still snowing!!! woooo!!! we were so happy (even me, seeing as we had put our heavy bags down) We took lots of photos and some video, the architecture is absolutely amazing. It's almost overwhelming - you can't just stand there staring at one beautiful building because there are three others just as beautiful next to it and even more if you turn arround! it's hard to know where to start! Be thankful though, this blog is shorter than it would have been because we don't know anything much about the history of brussels or the Grand Place so we've got nothing to write on this subject, just photos. :-)
here's a google map of the place:
here(click me)
some cool buildings:
and some photos of us having fun in the snow:
Debbie doing her "Rock on" pose:
me doing my "I'm trying desperately not to look boring in photos" pose:
my second attempt at not being boring:
a not very good attempt at a couple shot:
anyway, we were hungry and I'm really ashamed to admit that even with all these local coffee shops and resturants, we went, yet again to a "Quick" and ordered chicken nuggets.....We just wanted a snack to keep us going, I know it's no excuse.... We went to see some of the local markets in the square and we eventually went to the Mannekin Pis which was about 100 meters away from the Grand Place. it was much smaller than we were expecting... it's really not all that spectacular, it's just a small kid sized statue of a small kid urinating into a fountain.... so of course we took photos and video etc, like all the other people that were crowded arround. :-)
after that we kept walking to see what we could find away from the central bit of the town. it kind of gets a bit boring when we started getting into the CBD part, modern boring looking buildings. we did find another fountain though:
here's a typical allyway:
You'll see on the first video that we go into an arcade, this was about 100 meters long (you can see it fairly clearly on that google map if you go to the east a bit. it's the long blue-roofed thing.) and consisted almost entirely of chocolate and lace shops... still we found a solitary coffee shop and sat down. Debbie had a hot chocolate and I had a cuppachino rather than my usual latte, mostly because neither of us could really read anything on the menu and I figured that asking for a latte would probably just get me a glass of milk... the cappacino wasn't very good though, the coffee was burnt. we did get some free nougat with our drinks though - mmmmm nougat.
After the coffee break we went back up to the hotel for a bit of a freshen up before dinner. It was so good having the hotel there so close, we never had to look around for a public toilet, we just went up to the hotel room.
After Debbie had a shower, we went back to the arcade to have dinner. halfway through the arcade, it branches off to a narrow allyway with heaps of local resturants. nearly all of them had displays of mussels and other seafood outside. all of them had at least one waiter standing outside encouraging people to come in to eat. a lot of them had set menus on display with three course meals set out. We picked one that we had seen while walking through earlier. the main reason was that it had Escargot on the menu.... Inside, there was an open fireplace which were seated close to. the waiter gave us the menus and we picked a three course meal for 12 euro each. Which brings us to the Howie Associates London Branch Travel Tip One: often these set menus work out much cheaper than ordering individual food from the menu.
We both had escargot for entree, mussels for mains and Chocolate mousse for desert. Neither of us had eaten escargot before so it was a good experience. Debbie had quite a bit of trouble getting the slippery little suckers out of the shells, and I think that she actually may have pushed two of them in so far that we couldn't get them out. so I ate my 6 and debbie unfortunately only had 4. They really weren't all that great honestly. the sauce that they were in was kind of a pestoish thing, which was really nice, but the snails themselves tasted really bland. their texture was sort of like non-chewy calamari. The mussels were really good though. they were in a sort of onion-soup type sauce which by itself would have made a very good entree, it had onions and celery and all sorts of yummy stuff, and of course the mussels had been cooked in it so they had soaked up it's flavour and tasted absolutely wonderful. We're used to the mussels at Belgo (the belgian resturant in Covent Garden) which are generally in a thick sauce, but these ones tasted more... seafoodish. We topped it off with a small bottle of rose. Total meal cost: 42 euros - not a bad amount. the wine was 18 euros so it could have been a very reasonable price, but hey, as our saying went: "We're only in Brussels once.... this year."
We also found that despite the official languages being French, Dutch (Flemish) and German, most people actually understood English, even if they couldn't speak it well. this is a great bonus, it would have been hard had we not been able to communicate with anyone. Often, when walking into a store, the shopkeeper would say "Bonjour! Hello!"
So anyway, About here would be a good time to watch the first video as this is where it finishes.
The videos are edited a bit better than the Japan one - I'm getting better at using Microsoft's movie maker software and we're getting better at taking video... I think... Debbie mostly had the video camera during our time in Belgium and I mostly stuck with old faithful still shots. We've interspersed our talking on the video and some pumping techno in other parts. This is because our mood wasn't a relaxed one it was more excited and energetic throuought the whole three days so the music reflects our mood really :-) I'll also have to warn you that I was attempting to grow a beard over these three days, I've since shaved it off though, I didn't really like it. oh, and I do apologise, it was dificult to get the audio levels consistant and so some bits are quieter than others.
anyway, here it is (it's about 20mb so when opening the page, you may want to press the pause button and go make a cup of tea or something :-) shouldn't take more than 5 minutes or so to download):
Andrew and Debbie Invade Belgium (the movie!) Part1
oh - and when debbie is taking the video at the start and she says it's a beautiful church, it's not actually a church, it's another building of some sort, but we don't really know.... one thing about the towns in Belgium is that normal buildings get made just as beautifully as churches in other countries, and the churches in Belgium are staggeringly beautiful.
We've broken it down into sections so you can take it in a few smaller bits corresponding with each video we've done or do it all in one sitting if you wish. so here it is:
So we bought 240 euro for the trip which cost us just under 200 pounds. our plan was to spend no more than 30 euro each per day on food and other stuff. This turned out to be somewhere between 50 and 100 euros under what we really needed.
Monday (London to Brussels)
So this was our first time on the Eurostar. It was extremely easy to get. We had ordered our tickets, accommodation and tour online so all we did when we got to St Pancras international was stick our credit card in the machine and the tickets printed out for us. We arrived about 1 hour before the train was due to depart, this allowed us a bit of time for a coffee before embarking. Checking in was really easy and passport control was very quick. After a quick bag scan and a stamp on our passports, we were off!
We were both carrying a backpack and also had one small weeled suitcase. we found this was heaps for a three night stay, and even allowed us a bit of room for souvenires.
So as we pulled out of the station, it started snowing. Even though we were missing out, we didn't mind of course - brussels without snow would be better than London with snow, we were sure! The train took about 20 mins to get to the chunnel and I estimate about 30 minutes to go through it. I didn't really take note of the time that we came out so I'm not sure exactly. after about 1.5hrs we made a quick stop at lille and then another 20 mins and we arrived at Brussels midi.
Now, I'm ashamed to say it, but the first thing that we did on arriving in Brussels was to eat at their equivalent of Mcdonalds..... they call it "quick" but it's pretty much the same as the golden arches. Now that I think about it, I didn't see a McDonalds anywhere during our stay!
Next was a short ride on the local trains ("The Metro") which were like London's tubes, but not quite so tube-like.... this was very easy, the ticket guy at Brussels Midi spoke good english and gave us a colour coded map and some good directions to where we wanted to go. Probably about 15 mins on the train and we arrived at Centraal Station. The stations were suprisingly close together, and as we found out later on, Brussels, despite being the capital of Belgium and the headquarters of the Euorpean Union, it is actually a really small city. Its population is only 1.1 million. That's about half of Brisbane, and 1/14th of London.
Arriving at Centraal, we came out to street level and it was snowing!!! Debbie took some video at this point (shown in the first video below). I need to explain why I was looking so exasperated in the video: We had just been on the train for two hours from London, had the stress of taking a local train with everything in either French or Dutch (it was easy, but still stressfull), we were carrying heavy backpacks and I was carrying a heavy suitcase which I just finished dragging up a flight of stairs. It was cold and wet and debbie was standing in the open with our expensive video camera and getting rained/snowed on. I just wanted to get to the hotel room, I told debbie that she could stand in the snow all she wanted to AFTER we put our bags down, but no... she wanted to video it right there and then.... I guess it did make good footage, and I guess it was our first real experience with snow, so if she can forgive me for being tired and stressed, I can forgive her for being over-excited :-)
so... We saw snow! this is our first time actually walking through snow! unfortunately I was too focused on finding the hotel to really enjoy it. Debbie kept walking really slow and stopping every now and then to try to find where we were. I had memorized the map from central to our hotel so I was getting more frustrated every minute.
"it's this way! come on..." I would say
"hang on... how do you know, are you sure?" debbie would reply
Andrew: "for the third time... yes! we're looking for the curvy building, can you see a curvy building here?"
Debbie: "well, no.."
Andrew: "that's because it's around the corner"
*a very very short distance later*
Debbie: "this area is kinda curvy"
Andrew: *Exasperated stare* "Debbie... are ANY of these buildings ANYTHING like the curvy one we saw on the map?"
Debbie: "... uh... not really...."
Andrew: *storms off in the correct direction*
Neverthless we did end up going past a really cool church, but we didn't stop for photos. We figured we'd go back later on when we weren't carrying backpacks and the sky wasn't raining ice.
Anyway, we eventually got to the hotel and checked in. When we got up to the room we were amazed! it was on the top floor on the corner of the building so we had views of Brussels in two directions! out of one window we could see the big building that forms part of the Grand Place - it was absolutely spectacular.
(Normally at this point I'd put in a picture, but now that I look through all the photos we didn't actually take any from the hotel room until the night time. but there is a video from the room of course :-) )
Hotel reception gave us a note from the tour organisation that we had arranged to go with for a day trip to Amsterdam on tuesday. it said that unfortunately due to the fact that we were the only people booked on the trip, the tour had been cancelled and we would recieve a full refund. They offered us a free tour of Gent and Brugge as concilation. In hindsight, we were both glad that we went to see Gent and Brugge rather than Amsterdam because the tour was exausting and going all the way to another country would have brought us back to our hotel at about 9pm. We'll go back to Holland another day.
So Next we went out to the streets and headed to the Grand Place. the 'A' in each of Grand and Place is pronounced like the 'A' in "bark". so we instantly saw that we made a very good choice of Hotel. we couldn't have picked one closer to the centre of town. We walked through allyways, arcades, squares, The shops were mostly Chocolate shops, lace shops, waffle places, tourist-type shops or local resturants. there was the occasional clothing shop and there was a whole section of about 6 or 7 shops in an arcade that only sold leather clothes. the highlight of course was that it was still snowing!!! woooo!!! we were so happy (even me, seeing as we had put our heavy bags down) We took lots of photos and some video, the architecture is absolutely amazing. It's almost overwhelming - you can't just stand there staring at one beautiful building because there are three others just as beautiful next to it and even more if you turn arround! it's hard to know where to start! Be thankful though, this blog is shorter than it would have been because we don't know anything much about the history of brussels or the Grand Place so we've got nothing to write on this subject, just photos. :-)
here's a google map of the place:
here(click me)
some cool buildings:
and some photos of us having fun in the snow:
Debbie doing her "Rock on" pose:
me doing my "I'm trying desperately not to look boring in photos" pose:
my second attempt at not being boring:
a not very good attempt at a couple shot:
anyway, we were hungry and I'm really ashamed to admit that even with all these local coffee shops and resturants, we went, yet again to a "Quick" and ordered chicken nuggets.....We just wanted a snack to keep us going, I know it's no excuse.... We went to see some of the local markets in the square and we eventually went to the Mannekin Pis which was about 100 meters away from the Grand Place. it was much smaller than we were expecting... it's really not all that spectacular, it's just a small kid sized statue of a small kid urinating into a fountain.... so of course we took photos and video etc, like all the other people that were crowded arround. :-)
after that we kept walking to see what we could find away from the central bit of the town. it kind of gets a bit boring when we started getting into the CBD part, modern boring looking buildings. we did find another fountain though:
here's a typical allyway:
You'll see on the first video that we go into an arcade, this was about 100 meters long (you can see it fairly clearly on that google map if you go to the east a bit. it's the long blue-roofed thing.) and consisted almost entirely of chocolate and lace shops... still we found a solitary coffee shop and sat down. Debbie had a hot chocolate and I had a cuppachino rather than my usual latte, mostly because neither of us could really read anything on the menu and I figured that asking for a latte would probably just get me a glass of milk... the cappacino wasn't very good though, the coffee was burnt. we did get some free nougat with our drinks though - mmmmm nougat.
After the coffee break we went back up to the hotel for a bit of a freshen up before dinner. It was so good having the hotel there so close, we never had to look around for a public toilet, we just went up to the hotel room.
After Debbie had a shower, we went back to the arcade to have dinner. halfway through the arcade, it branches off to a narrow allyway with heaps of local resturants. nearly all of them had displays of mussels and other seafood outside. all of them had at least one waiter standing outside encouraging people to come in to eat. a lot of them had set menus on display with three course meals set out. We picked one that we had seen while walking through earlier. the main reason was that it had Escargot on the menu.... Inside, there was an open fireplace which were seated close to. the waiter gave us the menus and we picked a three course meal for 12 euro each. Which brings us to the Howie Associates London Branch Travel Tip One: often these set menus work out much cheaper than ordering individual food from the menu.
We both had escargot for entree, mussels for mains and Chocolate mousse for desert. Neither of us had eaten escargot before so it was a good experience. Debbie had quite a bit of trouble getting the slippery little suckers out of the shells, and I think that she actually may have pushed two of them in so far that we couldn't get them out. so I ate my 6 and debbie unfortunately only had 4. They really weren't all that great honestly. the sauce that they were in was kind of a pestoish thing, which was really nice, but the snails themselves tasted really bland. their texture was sort of like non-chewy calamari. The mussels were really good though. they were in a sort of onion-soup type sauce which by itself would have made a very good entree, it had onions and celery and all sorts of yummy stuff, and of course the mussels had been cooked in it so they had soaked up it's flavour and tasted absolutely wonderful. We're used to the mussels at Belgo (the belgian resturant in Covent Garden) which are generally in a thick sauce, but these ones tasted more... seafoodish. We topped it off with a small bottle of rose. Total meal cost: 42 euros - not a bad amount. the wine was 18 euros so it could have been a very reasonable price, but hey, as our saying went: "We're only in Brussels once.... this year."
We also found that despite the official languages being French, Dutch (Flemish) and German, most people actually understood English, even if they couldn't speak it well. this is a great bonus, it would have been hard had we not been able to communicate with anyone. Often, when walking into a store, the shopkeeper would say "Bonjour! Hello!"
So anyway, About here would be a good time to watch the first video as this is where it finishes.
The videos are edited a bit better than the Japan one - I'm getting better at using Microsoft's movie maker software and we're getting better at taking video... I think... Debbie mostly had the video camera during our time in Belgium and I mostly stuck with old faithful still shots. We've interspersed our talking on the video and some pumping techno in other parts. This is because our mood wasn't a relaxed one it was more excited and energetic throuought the whole three days so the music reflects our mood really :-) I'll also have to warn you that I was attempting to grow a beard over these three days, I've since shaved it off though, I didn't really like it. oh, and I do apologise, it was dificult to get the audio levels consistant and so some bits are quieter than others.
anyway, here it is (it's about 20mb so when opening the page, you may want to press the pause button and go make a cup of tea or something :-) shouldn't take more than 5 minutes or so to download):
Andrew and Debbie Invade Belgium (the movie!) Part1
oh - and when debbie is taking the video at the start and she says it's a beautiful church, it's not actually a church, it's another building of some sort, but we don't really know.... one thing about the towns in Belgium is that normal buildings get made just as beautifully as churches in other countries, and the churches in Belgium are staggeringly beautiful.
Tuesday, 8 April 2008
yet another small update
yay! we finally have our internet back!!!!
This is going to be our longest blog post yet in terms of the amount of writing. We've got a whole bunch of video and some photos. I won't put up quite so many photos this time, because you can see them in the video, but I will put up some.
we took over 220 photos and 3hrs of video. I got a bit fed up and managed to find a freeware tool that will resize the photos in a batch, so I don't have to sit there dragging them into an image tool and resizing them individually.
Dispite that though, the next blog will represent over 20hrs of video editing and writing....
The only thing holding it up now is getting debbie to proofread the blog and the time it takes to upload everything!
Watch This Space.
P.S.
Here's some teaser photos to keep you going :-)
This is going to be our longest blog post yet in terms of the amount of writing. We've got a whole bunch of video and some photos. I won't put up quite so many photos this time, because you can see them in the video, but I will put up some.
we took over 220 photos and 3hrs of video. I got a bit fed up and managed to find a freeware tool that will resize the photos in a batch, so I don't have to sit there dragging them into an image tool and resizing them individually.
Dispite that though, the next blog will represent over 20hrs of video editing and writing....
The only thing holding it up now is getting debbie to proofread the blog and the time it takes to upload everything!
Watch This Space.
P.S.
Here's some teaser photos to keep you going :-)
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