January 6, Friday

We’re in Belgium!

I have been feeling guilty for the past week for not liking France.  I did the best I could to find the bright side of things, but by yesterday we were all sort of depressed and ready to go home.  Our last day in France we went to Reims and Epernay … the weather was bad, we had the worst meal of the trip, a white-knuckled drive back to the hotel due to “vent violent” (violent cross winds on the highway and driving rain) and ended up going back to our hotel around 2p.m. and just hibernating in our rooms until we could leave in the morning.

France is full of intensely ugly architecture, which came as a huge unpleasant surprise to me.  They have these big tenement apartment buildings all over (including all through Paris) that look like what I picture when I read about the hideous, unwelcoming housing the communists put up all over Russia.  I never expected to see that in France.  Even the old, neat buildings don’t look particularly well-cared for.  The amount of graffiti, everywhere, is distracting.  You get the sense that nobody in France really cares about making their little corner of the world a nice place to be.

Driving out into the French countryside on the way to Belgium, the farm land has an abandoned look to it … not a single farm machine to be seen, no animals, no people out and about.  It’s just stark.  I keep using the word “ugly” but it’s the best word I can think of to describe most of the France we saw.

The border from France into Belgium is a little river; more of a creek than a river.  It’s small — and the difference between the two countries is immediate and dramatic.  You cross into Belgium, and suddenly there are animals!  Geese!  Horses!  Cows!  Chickens!  Ponies!  Sheep!  There are people out doing things in their yards!  Farm machinery in use!  It looks so much more prosperous and welcoming.  The architecture is charming and all the little stone houses and barns are scrupulously maintained.  Our spirits were suddenly lifted.

I was worried that the reason I didn’t like France was that our trip was too long and we were suffering from travel fatigue.  The kids were not having fun and kept asking how many more days until we got to go home.  After today, I can safely say that wasn’t the case.  We’re having a great time again.

I’m sorry we wasted so much time in stupid France, but from now on when people talk about vacationing there I will no longer be envious.  I can check that off my bucket list and move on.

Bruges is nearly as beautiful as Canterbury.  It has a different look to it, but it’s gorgeous and quaint.  The little shops and restaurants everywhere are fun and interesting to look at.  I’ve never seen so much lace.  Shop after shop just stuffed with the most gorgeous lace, and the prices are very affordable.  I bought a little antique doily to go on the small round table John made that sits by Grandma Barbie’s chair, under the small Steve Tyree warbler sculpture.

The antique shops here are my favorite.  They aren’t nearly as fancy as the ones we saw in France, and the prices are really quite low.  I ended up buying another painting; ironically, an oil painting of Paris by a French artist.  I couldn’t afford such a treasure in France.  Maybe tomorrow I’ll find a great piece by a Flemish artist — although I think Adam is hoping I don’t because I’ve gone a bit crazy with the art purchases on this trip.  (I also bought the cutest little pen-and-watercolor painting of geese in Hartepool, England.)

Bruges also seems to be the place all the artists are now.  Perhaps they once all flocked to Paris, but not anymore.  Here in Bruges, I saw two different artists painting en plein air, and if you are looking for affordable artwork (paintings, sculpture, pottery, etc.) this seems a great place.

Tomorrow we’re planning to visit the Diamond Museum. (Antwerp is the diamond capital of the world, and just down the road from Bruges.  We won’t have time to go there.) Isabella is particularly excited about that museum.

It’s supposed to rain tomorrow, which may ruin our walking-around plans a little, but there is quite a bit to do indoors so I think we’ll have a great day no matter what the weather is like.

We’re re-energized and ready to have fun.  Tomorrow will be our only full day in Belgium, as Sunday we must take the chunnel back to England.  We’ll spend the night in a hotel near Heathrow for a very early flight home on Monday morning.  That day will not be much fun, as we’ll be in full travel-home mode, although we are hoping we have to time to see the white cliffs of Dover.

January 7, Saturday

Bruges is an art lover’s paradise.  We had possibly the very best day of our trip here.  It’s simply magical.

It was raining a little when we went out for breakfast this morning and we thought it was going to be like that all day, but it cleared up by 9:30 or so and was sunny and nice the rest of the day.  We walked and walked and walked, and still aren’t sure if we’ve seen everything.

Bruges is packed with art, of every type and style imaginable.  They have everything from galleries showcasing 17th Century paintings (so expensive we didn’t go inside) and Impressionist paintings (not by the famous guys, but still gorgeous and way out of our price range) to modern artists — paintings, sculptures, lithographs, papier mache, tapestries, photography, pottery, stained glass …. antiques around every corner, the lace market … I know I’m forgetting stuff, and my head has been on a swivel all day long.

We went to three different museums today.  They are all pretty small, but thoroughly enjoyable.

The first was the Diamond Museum.  They showed how diamonds are mined all the way through how they are cut and graded, and had a bunch of the tools used for cutting, polishing, and jewelry making.  The kids were more interested in this than I would have thought.

The second museum was an exhibit of Salvador Dali.   They featured mostly lithographs and series that he’d done as illustrations for various books.  Our favorites were his illustrations of Alice in Wonderland.  They also had the whole series he’d done for Dante’s Divine Comedy, including the one we purchased in Paris.  They had ours for sale and wanted more than double what we paid (and as far as we could tell with careful studying, ours was identical) so we felt really good about our purchases at the Paris shop.  I’ve never been particularly fond of Dali, but something about seeing those lithographs and paintings in person has turned me into a big fan.  They are powerful images, each more fantastical than the next.

The last museum was lithographs by Picasso, with a special temporary exhibit featuring Miro, Matisse, Chagall, Warhol, James Ensor, and some lesser sculptures by Rodin.  I liked the Picasso works a lot, but in my opinion they don’t hold a candle to the Dalis.

Bruges is just simply gorgeous and brimming with ambiance.  Horses pulling carriages are running through the streets, and since so many of the streets are narrow cobblestone, car traffic is either limited or impossible.  It’s so neat to be walking around those tiny streets and hear the clip-clop of all the horses squiring people around.  We would have loved to take a carriage ride, but they wanted €39 for a half-hour (around $50).  But even without riding in a carriage, you still get to enjoy the presence of the horses and buggies.

The architecture is also fantastic.  The buildings are ancient, small, and many of them hang out over the canals on one side.  I would dearly love to go inside one of those houses!  They are all private residences, though.  One house was just about the coolest house I think I’ve ever seen — it was long and narrow, and basically built as a bridge over a canal.  The water passed under the width of the house via three big arches.  I think Adam got some photos of it.

Oh, and swans!  There are swans everywhere, just being all mean and elegant the way swans are.  They certainly add to the romantic, old-fashioned ambience, and probably also do a good job of keeping photo-happy tourists out of locals’ gardens.  Nobody messes with a swan.

You can also eat yourself sick on chocolate here.  Every forth or fifth shop is a chocolatier, making their treats right there on the premises.  That actually caused us some trouble with the kids and the constant begging.  We’d pass one and fight off the begging and whining, only to have it immediately resume when we passed the next shop 10 seconds later.

I just can’t say enough good things about Bruges.  There are several other museums that we won’t get to see due to lack of time, and we didn’t go up the bell tower (Randy, you’ll know it as the one Brendan Gleeson fell out of at the end of “In Bruges”) because they were charging a fee and there was a line.  We’d reached the kids’ limit of patience, so we skipped it.  We’ll just have to come back another time.  That bell tower, by the way, rings every hour and can be heard all around the city.  Chiming bells, swans, horses and carriages, canals, artists outside painting … beautiful perfection.

We’re back in the hotel now, after a mid-afternoon snack of authentic Belgian waffles.  (Delicious!!)  We need to rest and recuperate a little before we head out for dinner.

I’m already feeling nostalgic for Bruges, and sad that we have to leave tomorrow.  In most important ways, today is the last day of our trip.  We certainly went out on a high note though!

Tomorrow we drive from Bruges back through France (ugh) and take the chunnel to England.  We’ll make a quick detour over to see the White Cliffs of Dover, but other than that tomorrow is just a day to get to our hotel next to Heathrow airport and make sure our stuff is all packed according to airline specifications.  Then the unpleasant travel day back to the States, which will be loooooooooong. Hopefully all our stuff will make it home undamaged.  We picked up some really great treasures on this trip and I’ll breathe a sigh of relief when they are safely in our house.

Sunday morning we got up early and left Bruges to head back to London.  After driving through Dunkirk (not much to see; large and industrial port) we made it to Calais early and were able to catch an earlier Chunnel train back to England.  This gave us some extra time for a “long cut” back to our hotel near Heathrow airport.  Think of US1 along the California coast line and you’ll get a sense of the backroad path we took along the English southern coast that day.

First stop:  Dover and the famed white cliffs.