Brussels & Bruges

After almost 3 months of nothing but work, I took a couple of days off and Taffy & I went to Brussels & Bruges via the Eurostar. We arrived at Brussels Midi station at 4.05pm y and by 6pm had seen all the main tourist attractions of Brussels old town. The most interesting thing was Mannekin Pis, who had been dressed up by a group in their colours. When we went to have a look at him on Sunday, he was wearing an outfit promoting Unicef. I'm not sure I like it when he has clothes on. That evening, I had frogs' legs and stoemp (Belgian staple of a potato, veggie & bacon mash).

On Sunday, we visited the Museum of Fine Arts, which has some Rubens & Brueghels but not much else. We then made our way to the Comic Museum. It turns out that Belgium has a great tradition of comics, the most famous being, of course, Tintin. I also found out that the smurfs came from Belgium too. In the afternoon, we visited the Atomium, a massive structure constructed for the 1958 Expo. We went to the top for views of Brussels and saw a very poor exhibition entitled Bipolar, about the Arctic and Antarctic. On returning to the old town, we ran the gauntlet and ended up in a restaurant where I had escargot, mussels, a creme caramel & a drink for €12.

Monday saw us getting up early (for us) and taking a train to Bruges. The 2 jaded travellers found it a pretty but boring town, especially since it was cold (wind chill factor of about -10oC) and then rained as we were walking back to the station. I was surprised to accidentally find a Michelangelo sculpture of the Madonna and Child in one of the churches. We also wandered into a Heritage listed compound (Beguinale) where widows and spinsters used to live if they did not belong to a religious order (i.e. if they didn't want to become nuns).

Having been banned from booking hotels, I was delighted (but also exhausted) to stay at the St Nicolas Hotel, as booked by Taffy, with its paper-thin walls, huge windows and the widest array of night noises ever: sirens, car horns, traffic, nightclub music, drunks etc. Methinks my booking techniques are not so bad after all...

An update on London activities: Feb 2 saw the heaviest snow falls in London on record, which is actually nothing much for the rest of Europe. Everything ground to a halt (you can imagine how bad it was when I tell you that entire train lines will stop in London when there are 'leaves on the track'). I also made my first siu yook (roast pork), which was a wonderful success, and my first whole steamed chicken (with ginger & spring onion), which, after an initial hiccup (it was raw on the inside after the first steaming), ended up being demolished by David & Taffy. Two shows I saw recently were Traces, a piece by 5 ex-Cirque du Soleil performers, which was slightly strange (French Canadian influence?) but showed off their versatility & stamina (on stage almost continuously for the entire show) and Stomp, which was tremendously energetic and even more impressive that Traces in the stamina department, with the 8 performers on stage for 1 hr 45 mins without an intermission.