S/V Tavarua

Watched the Miele washers go around this morning. Our first laundry day and it was a bit of a disappointment. Someone had dyed clothes prior to our washing. Now some of the less important clothes are grey-blue. Thankfully, most of our clothes don’t hold color! We had even seperated out the lights from the darks and did two different loads. If only the dark clothes had been added to that washer….
Hotel Adornes had bicycles for us to putter around town with. So to avoid the mobs of tourists in the main square, we circled around the town. They have a quiet bike path along the moat-canal and a couple of windmills. As we neared the tourists again, it was like being a salmon on a bicycle going upstream with random rocks moving erratically in the current to cut you off at any given moment. But, hey, once you get your courage up, you can mow down the skinnier tourists. It started raining and the area cleared out considerably.
We headed over to the oldest pub in town, circa 1515, and whiled away the afternoon with a boardgame and papergame of Dots & Squares. All was good on this dreary day until a table of 5 chain smokers (early deathwish by the 20 year olds) sat down and filled the place up with smoke so thick you couldn’t see them within 20 minutes of their arrival. Bummer we don’t smoke, we could have a portable smoke screen of privacy wherever we needed one.
Moved along to a Celtic pub and the lights went out for about an hour due to the thunderstorm outside. It had a cool effect as they lit candles everywhere in the pub. Finalized the wet evening with a second dinner at the Egyptian restaurant. Our server was chatty and gave us the name of the music he had on the stereo, Amr Diab, as well as his GSM, if we ever end up in Egypt.

We listened to Finns partying until 3 in the morning. In fact, I do believe I heard them congratulating each other even at 4:30 about what a great party it was. Seems wearing a small white captains cap was part of the festivities.
Headed off on the train to Brugges and were a bit shocked at the prices in the town. It is one of the best preserved 16th century cities.. with a moat around it and all… but they seem to know it. There are no cheap restaurants and the prices are rigged a bit. Despite that the town is cute once you get past the hoards of tourists. Hmm, having a mixed reaction on this town. If you could get rid of about half the tourists, you might find the charm. Oh, that’s right.. we are between two big holidays in this region… Rememberence Day and Queen’s Day. That could bring in all the Londoners.
More later.. heading off into the city again…

Uh-oh, and we thought we were over jetlag… 11 am and we are up and moving after a 2-4am wake-up in the middle of the night. We considered seeing all sorts of sights today, but it all failed due to grogginess and the rain (we knew the rain would hit us in Belgium).
Instead we pondered the waffles, chocolate stores, sweet tooths that all Belgiums seemed to favor. Did I mention that they add syrup to their beers here? Would you like Mint or Orange syrup? Yikes. Overall, not a very exciting day, but we found a good evening pub and watched more people than watched us.

We had a fine day walking through new town, after a smoky breakfast at the hotel. Ah, the traditional white hard roll and butter. But this is Brussells, so we also had a croissant (cereal, hard-boild eggs and fruit available on the sidebar).
We headed to the Brussells Parliment across from a city park laid out in 1776. The lilacs are in bloom in the park and there are health-concious joggers in all directions. Checked out the Palace of Justice and saw a church with a stolen Virgin Mary (must be God’s will). Checked out a sculpture garden park and a park with 36 Medival statues. Lunched at a Musical Instruments cafe that had a great view of the city and what I would soon find out to be Amsterdam architecture.
We spent the afternoon in the Ancient and Modern art museum covering the 14th to 18th century of Belgian and Flemish artists. They certainly had a fixation with the church back then. The modern art was more varied.. okay, Magritte is always a favorite… Dali is a nightmare in fantasy.. and the -8 floor (they really go down 8 floors from the surface) was well.. stupid… three black canvases… one red square… Bauhaus was quite a scam in the art field, if you ask me. Our return from floor -8 had a huge elevator with seats to relax on.. which of course we did. Dang, only back on floor -3. We wandered around some more and observed many art student flirting more than working on the color comparison pallettes that look like the assignment. It was a cute wander. Finally, we made it back to the surface.
Derrell decided at this fine time, that maybe the shoes needed replacement. Hmm, bet this will be a theme for a few days.
We saw a chunk of the original 13th century wall of the city and a lovely street of antique shops. Thankfully, all downhill back to the hotel.
Hmm.. tried out the brewery at A la Becasse. Lambic Doux.. now that is a good lambic… no make that a fantastic lambic. Headed over for an Italian dinner in a yellow (do they paint the interiors any differently?) walled restaurant. Wanted to stay out and watch the light show in the square.. but that damn jet lag caught up again.

The plane ride from Zurich to Brussels wasn’t too tedious, but the lobby before gettng on the plane was overwhelming. It didn’t look like there were anymore than two people of any nationality in the lobby. Additionally, the previous flight to Brussels had been cancelled, so the plane was overflowing with travelers. We had traditional African dresses, sweatsuits from Russia, tie-dye from Germany, turbans and sari’s from India, covered heads from Iran and business suits from everywhere. The passport check was set up two feet away from the check-in counter and two feet across from a set of vending machines. The concept of personal space disappears during these times. You find you have feet and possibly balance, everything else you have to jettison.
Our train ride from the airport to our hotel was amusing. We buy our tickets and rush to get on the train (which is posted to leave in 2 minutes)… and we sit. Y’know, should train cars have lights on within them? Y’know, all the other passengers are now looking at their watches, shouldn’t we have left about 5 minutes ago? Ah-ha, this train car has a problem (said in Dutch.. we watched the reaction on those that could speak the language). Okay, unload the luggage move onto the next train car. (Think lots of people with lots of jet lag.) Hmm, we are still sitting, the train isn’t moving. Uh-oh, another conductor.. time to move to another track. Let’s follow the locals that spoke the language, everyone else looks more lost than us. Off to the next track… and after a long sit we are off only 40 minutes off schedule with only the locals looking disturbed.
Our walk to the hotel from the train station was uneventful, but I don’t think a car running me over would have phased me too much given the jet lag. We checked our bags at Hotel de la Madeline. Nothing remarkable about the hotel except the location. Really, nothing remarkable.
We took the afternoon (geesh, jet lag) to walk around the city center and downed a traditional lambic and trappist ale. We saw gypsy women pan-handling more aggressively than Santa Cruz. Found a great cafe to people watch around the Grand Place.
I thought the architecture on the Grand Place was hiddeous. They had rebuilt the square within 7 years of an army on-slaught that took down 4000 wooden buildings. When they rebuild they did it in 1698 in stone with ornate architecture that I just don’t have an eye for… gaudy and unbalanced. Looks like most of the rest of the tourists thought it was great, though.
We found restaurant row for dinner and I had Mussels in Brussels. No, seriously, this is a seafood town. They were good. Derrell had a salmon that he said was the best he’d ever had. It could have been the herb butter.
Not many Americans here, but not many locals in the tourist section either.
We finally got our room at the hotel and blew the room’s fuse when using our hairdryer. Hmm, I wonder if the wattage-amperage-voltage-americana is going to work in Europe? (Yes, I did switch it to 240.. even with jet lag.)