When Amy came to Belgium

Amy has been over here in Belgium for the past 4 days, so we did a bit of sightseeing. I've already posted 2 posts below about Gent and Brussels, this one's about Brugge and Oostende. Also, I'll put up all my photos on my flickr site, so don't forget to check there too! (link is to the right of this page).

We decided to check out Brugge for part of the day, and then travel to the coast so Amy n Mish could meet the North Sea. Brugge is a really lovely place, but also very touristy and hence fairly hectic.

Because I'm never normal

We kicked off our morning by visiting churches and the swans on the canals. (Remember my earlier posts about the swans in Brugge?? The Brugge people rioted against their French King and killed his adviser/best friend whose name was the French word for ‘long neck’. The people demanded more freedoms and rights, and the King agreed on the condition that the people not kill him, and also that they keep and tend to the swans that lived on the Canals, in memory of the King’s adviser ‘long neck’ – y’know, because swans have long necks! Apparently there was a big problem recently when avian flu came to Europe as all birds had to be caged by law, but the people of Brugge felt they had to still keep their historical duty to the swans, so they built cages over the canals for the Swans to live in and stay on the canals.)

We then went on a beer tour of a local brewery!! It's still right in the middle of town (see photo above), and is called De Halve Maan (The Half Moon). It's the last brewery left in Brugge, and apparently they have downsized a lot and only really keep it going by running tours through the place. Glad we could help by learning about beer! Plus, the tour came with a free taster...

And a great view of Brugge from the top of the brewery!

Did you know that Belgians make beer in champagne bottles up to 16 litres?!?!

The brewery also had a collection of beer cans from around the world, although NZ's representatives were not particularly impressive and included goram DB!!

We had our free taste of Brugse Zot (a blond beer 'the fool of Brugge'). Pretty good!!

Had a look in the Tintin shop (Tintin being the creation of Belgian artist Georges Remi)

Wandered along the canals

Then we moved on to Oostende in the afternoon.

Oostende is a coastal town, lots of fishing going on there.

Had a squiz at the beach, though it was fairly windy and cold (North Sea can get a bit rough!)

Then we headed back to Gent to have a canal ride in the early evening, seeing as we had missed out the day before. It was fairly good value at 5 euro for 45 min cruise!

It was cool for me too as I hadn't been on the canals before, so I got to see some familiar monuments (like the Castle here) from a different vantage point.

This is Gent's version of the famous Manneken Pis. Apparently it was around long before the tourist-pulling one in Brussels, and I think he is way cooler because he's got flowers too. No peeing boy statue is complete without flowers. Ok so maybe I should explain the peeing boy fascination of Belgium (I only just learnt about what it means). Back in medieval times they used to use the urine of young boys to soften leather, as it was more pure than the urine of all the beer-drinking adults. So young boys could earn a bit of money by selling their pee to leather merchants etc. Just as an aside, apparently the water supply from the canals was so bad that the people of Belgium drank beer instead. Even small children. So this is why they had to resort to using the urine of REALLY young boys, because once they were old enough to be weaned, they would have been drinking beer like the rest of the population!!

So, we ended up seeing 3 cities in 1 day. Bit of a whirlwind, but a great day!

Here is Hamish with his 17 cent (I kid you not) pudding. We even managed to work a dessert into the modest travel budget!!

Showing them lot around Gent

Friday I showed Amy n Mish around Gent. We were a bit more lucky with the weather, though it did POUR down in the evening (I think there was a shortage of cats and dogs so we got, like, rhinocerous rain). Anyway, here's some stuff we saw/did in Gent;

We climbed the Belfry tower of Gent. You can kinda see at the very top of the tower there is a dragon? (If you click the photo you can see the larger version). The dragon is the guardian of Gent. The current one up there is gold and weighs around 450 kg. The previous one is shown in the photo at the top of this post :)

A Belfry tower is a Flemish and French peculiarity apparently. They were used for spotting danger/fire etc in the city, as well as storing certain precious documents. Namely, the documents conferring rights to citizens (granted by the King) were locked away in chests such as the one above, to keep them safe. The idea was that if the documents were lost or damaged, the citizens effectively lost their rights. Hence they protected them pretty fiercely. They learnt the hard way that storing them too high up the tower meant they couldn't be rescued fast enough if there was a fire, so they were kept in a 'secrecy room' often under a false floor in the base level. Fascinating!

View from the top of the tower

This is an old Carillon keyboard. A Carillon was used to alert citizens to fires, storms, wars and such, as well as celebratory events. Its like a keyboard which rings bells in the tower, by playing levers and foot pedals. For me it is the ultimate instrument - a keyboard that rings massive bronze bells in a tower! In Medieval times, a ringing of bells from the lowest note to the highest note indicated that an attack had taken place. When we were in the tower, the carillonneur played the song 'Memory'. It was neat, and beats being attacked for sure!

We wandered around Gent and saw all the sights, and even tried a bit of Gent candy. This is a traditional candy shop called Temmerman. There's Hamish inside, stalking candy.

These are Cuberdons, well-known in Gent. They are little cones of raspberry-filled yummyness. The inside is liquidy and tastes a bit like candyfloss.

In the evening, we bought a couple of beers and sat down by the canal on Graslei to relax for a bit (we had done a LOT of walking). Amy n Mish got to try the beer Delirium Tremens (you know, the one with the pink elephants).

Hamish also discovered my favourite, Orval (its a trappist beer; those skillful, wonderful monks).

Kiwis in Brussels

On thursday Mish and I headed into Brussels to meet Amy at the Eurostar terminal (fast train which travels from London to Brussels through the chunnel!!) and then have a look around Brussels for the day. The weather wasn't that great but we managed to see a fair bit anyway.

First things first, of course we got down to the all important business of waffle-eating

And chocolate-eating

And then just viewing the chocolate when we simply couldn't fit any more in.

Went to see the (free) carpark rooftop panorama of Brussels

We visited the EU Parliament and Commission buildings

Where all that legal stuff happens. We got little lilliput-sized books that tell us what our rights are as EU citizens. Pity we're not EU citizens.

We visited a war museum at the Parc Du Cinquantenaire which is a massive park built to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Belgium's independance (including Congo, which was a colony of Belgium!!)

They had a wing of WWI uniforms from many countries, including NZ! We were impressed.

Big guns = big shells


Then we went to visit the Atomium

And we even got to go inside and between the electrons (by elevator, stairs and lifts)!!

You can see mini europe is out the front there. Unfortunately we didn't get to visit it due to the bad weather. But we could see all the mini buildings from the Atomium


Then after all that walking, we were pretty exhausted, so had to stop for refreshment (ie vending machine beer) before embarking on our train journey back to Gent. Good day!!!

Employed!

Pleased to announce that we have both been able to get jobs on the Isle of Skye in Scotland, at a hotel resort called Kinloch Lodge (http://www.kinloch-lodge.co.uk/). We have positions as general assistants (waiting, housekeeping etc) and the jobs come with accommodation, food and wi-fi yippee! We start on the 18th August, so will have a week or so to see a bit of the UK on the way up north from London to Skye. Yay Scottish Highlands!!!

Kinloch Lodge (right on the shore of Loch Na Dal). Aye, a Loch!!

This is the view from the Man of Stowe hike on the Isle of Skye, which I am already planning on doing!! Probably sooner rather than later before it gets too cold!!!

Amy arrives in Brussels tomorrow for a 4 day visit, so we are going to meet her there and see Brussels for the day. Then friday we will tour Gent, saturday we will go to visit Brugge and possibly the beach at Oostende. Sunday we will let her rest! The weather is not looking so good though (got soaked today when biked into town). Peculiar Belgian weather!!! Sunny one minute, raining cats, dogs and other miscellaneous animals the next....

De Verjaardag van Hamish

Decided to see Gent at night for the (second) celebration of Mish's birthday. We had a great pizza, went to see the movie Wanted (the cinema had an American Movie early release deal thingee for the 4th of July so we got to see it eventhough it hasnt been released in Belgium yet) and then wandered in to the city centre to see the lights on the old buildings.

Gent is really quite pretty at night, and there's a great atmosphere with everyone out enjoying the daylight (until about 11pm).


In other news, we finally have plans for what we're doing after we leave Gent at the end of July. We're flying back to the UK on the 6th August, but having a look through the Netherlands before we go. We're going to check out Maastricht, Rotterdam, Utrecht, The Hague, and Amsterdam. Then once we get back to the UK, we'll be looking for employment to get us through the winter. Have a couple of prospects at the mo, fingers crossed!

xxx

Hillarity in Hasselt

Today Hamish and I travelled to Hasselt, about 2 hours from Gent by train. It's known as the prettiest Flemish city, it has the largest Japanese garden in Europe, and also the national Jenever museum, so we thought it would be a great place to visit on Hamish's birthday.

The REALLY funny part is, we realised at the end of the day (thanks nean) that it WASN'T EVEN HIS BIRTHDAY and that we were a day early!!! Somehow we managed to get a day ahead of ourselves haha!! So we spent a good deal of time laughing over that. I guess the lucky guy gets 2 birthdays!!

But we had a pretty good day eating/drinking great Belgian stuff;
- Jenever (we tried Oranje bitter and Blackberry flavours mmm)
- Juniper berry sweets
- Liege sugar waffles with melted chocolate sauce
- Frites (fries) with mayonnaise
- Homemade Speculaas (spice) cookies
- Martino sandwich - minced meat (including sardines), anchovies, tabasco sauce with onions, pickles etc. This is famous in Gent and you can get a "Martino" all over Belgium

This is me waiting for my free shot of Jenever at the Jenever Museum

Hamish finally gets to try a Belgian waffle


Japanese Garden

Random sight-seeing train around Hasselt


Jenever!!

Also, I bought Mish a bike as part of his birthday prezzie. When he decided not to give it a name, I decided to step up and do so. I called it 'poor sod'. Poor sod and Isobel get along just fine :)