Bruges... rhymes with "rouge"

The boss had a trip that she needed to take to The Hague, so we made plans to take a weekend getaway beforehand, and agreed on Bruges, Belgium... a picturesque medieval fairytale town steeped in history - and we'd get to add another stamp to our metaphorical passports!

We left Frankfurt after she'd worked a half day, so we were still on the road at dinner time, we just stopped for fast food on the way.

First things first. I know there's an "s" on the end of it, but the French must have gotten a hold of the name and decided that the "s" should be silent. The name of the town (in English) rhymes with "rouge." Something else you should know is that in the official language of Belgium (Flemish, or as I like to ignorantly call it "Belgish"), it's actually spelled "Brügge," and pronounced differently in Belgish than in English. This becomes quite important when your wife is the one behind the wheel on the last leg into town, and her choice of navigation apps uses a British accent. I've looked around on the map and can't figure out precisely where it happened, but at one point we got turned around and ended up missing the turn to Bruges, because Nigel (the stereotypical British name I use to refer to her navigator) told her to follow signs to "Brugga." We took the wrong direction at a fork in the road, and due to construction (and a spam call at the worst possible time) ended up having to circle twice past the turn we needed to make.

Regardless, we ended up at the hotel. Eventually.

Our hotel was a bit outside the city center (as is our wont), and it shares a parking garage with the main train station in that area. We could physically see the hotel, but couldn't figure out how to get to it, as we didn't immediately see any signs pointing us toward it. After circling the area two or three times, we finally saw a small sign next to the entrance to the garage with the hotel name on it, and were able to determine that we should indeed enter the garage. We eventually wandered through all of the sections of the garage and found the correct place to park.

We had a free walking tour scheduled for the next morning, so we got up bright and early and started the walk into town. At the main road into town was a little street market, kinda fun to look through on our way by. We stopped at a coffee shop and got some coffees and pastries for breakfast. They hadn't finished taking down the Christmas Market in town, so we stopped at one of the little squares to use one of the tables so thoughtfully (and temporarily, I'm sure) abandoned.

On our tour, we learned lots about the town, but I later found two pieces of information that made me doubt some of the guide's stories. First, lemme tell you about the town - this is the factual stuff, which I've confirmed with my customary research. I'll give you the bad info afterwards.

Due to its location on (just very close to, really) the North Sea, Bruges quickly became one of the most important (and richest) cities in Europe, as the location made sense for a major trading hub. In 865, the first fort was built at the site of the city, originally to hold off Viking invaders. Unfortunately, the river leading around 5 miles to the North Sea wasn't deep enough for ships to navigate it, so the ships would be unloaded at the mouth of the river, with their contents transferred to smaller boats. Those smaller boats would navigate upriver to the city, and be unloaded in the "waterhalle," the largest covered harbor in Europe. Goods would be stored at the waterhalle prior to their sale and the fine folks from Bruges would take a cut from every trade, quickly making the city one of the richest in Europe. Any goods that were going to or from any city in the northern half of Europe would go through Bruges - fabric on its way out to Italy, food from all over the world to be imported to Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany or France, wool from England being imported to Europe... pretty much everything went through Bruges, and the city got richer and richer - eventually becoming the third most populated city in Europe.

English ships would come to town empty, and would fill up with goods to sell. Sailing those ships across the English Channel empty wouldn't be a wise idea though, so they loaded the ships up with stone as ballast, then would dump the stone when they loaded the boats with goods.

They built a glorious tower on the main square in 1240 which held the treasury and the municipal archives, and functioned as a watchtower.

In 1280, the building burned to the ground, destroying 400 years worth of municipal records. The city rebuilt the tower, but this time built the main portion of the tower out of stone - the same English stones that the empty ships had used for ballast. They constructed a wooden spire on the top of the building, decorated with the image of the Archangel Michael. Within ten years, the spire was destroyed by a lightning strike.

They rebuilt the tower again, this time using brick. Atop the new brick tower, they built another wooden spire. This spire lasted until 1741. They cleaned up the (seemingly inevitable) fire damage, finally adding stone parapets to the top of the building in 1822.

The story of the Bruges Belfry is evidently quite well known (despite the unassailable fact that neither the boss nor I had heard of it); well known enough that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a poem about it in 1845. The poem starts:

"In the market-place of Bruges stands the belfry old and brown; 

Thrice consumed and thrice rebuilded, still it watches o'er the town."

Over the centuries, the tower has developed a significant lean; the top of the tower leans 34 inches. They're going to start construction to stabilize the tower this year, but I don't think they're going to make it any higher - they might have finally learned their lesson. Or maybe they'll use brick or stone on another spire.

Here are a couple of pics of it - the gray stone you see on the bottom layer is the English stone previously used as ballast:

An interesting thing about the belfry: it contains a musical instrument called a carillon, basically a keyboard connected to at least 23 bronze bells. Why 23? Dunno. I can't learn everything for you. There's your homework assignment - figure it out and report back to the class.

The fact that it contains a carillon isn't the interesting part though. What's interesting is that the guy who plays the instrument plays all kinds of music on it. While we were there, we heard songs by the Carpenters and Harry Nilsson. I don't remember what Carpenters song, but the Harry Nilsson song was "Without you." In memoriam to Matthew Perry, he played the theme song from Friends the day after he passed away. I found a couple of examples online as well:

• Harry Nilsson: "Without you" (just the song, not the bells) 
• The Rembrandts: "I'll Be There For You" ("Friends" theme) 
• Gloria Gaynor: "I Will Survive" 
• Henry Mancini:  The theme from "The Pink Panther" 

During the tour, we walked across the St. Boniface Bridge, which gives the appearance of being ancient, but in truth dates only to 1910. While we were waiting for the bridge to clear off (damn tourists!) the boss noticed a guy in the little plaza selling watercolors - so of course we'd have to come back and try and find him again. Here's the bridge - the guy selling watercolors was on the near side of the stream, next to the building you can just see the edge of on the left:

One bad piece of information that the guide gave us (which might not be "bad," but I just couldn't confirm): He showed us a crest atop one of the buildings and told us that it was connected to the origin of the dollar sign. My independent research has shown that the true origin of the dollar sign is unknown, but that it *might* somehow be connected to the Pillars of Hercules (the usual representation of the Straight of Gibralter), which our guide did mention as being features of the crest. While I was able to find that, I wasn't able to find any reference to Bruges (or anyone connected with the city) who would have put their crest on a building, or why a crest on a building in Bruges would somehow be connected with a currency symbol for a currency that they don't use, and that wouldn't be referred to in print until the 1790's (or in widespread usage after 1869). Here's a pic of the building / crest in question:

You see the two pillars in the middle, right? And how there's a pennant of some sort wrapped around them? Do you see a possible origin of the dollar sign there? Yeah, me neither.

After the tour, we walked around, looking for a place to eat. I think it's a requirement for places to put their menus on the outside of the building, and we found a place that had an onion soup that sounded really good (as we were frozen solid at this point); unfortunately they didn't have any tables available. They sent us to their other location a few doors down the road. Same ownership, but much different vibe, and they didn't have the full menu available (so no soup!). The second place was a little cafe with circular two-tops. We sat and ordered; the wife ordered a flight of four beers. They came out in a little holder that stretched across the entire table. When our food came out, they had to slide another table in to be able to hold it all.

The wife struck up a conversation with the couple at the table on the other side of us, they were Belgians who lived closer to the coast and had come into the city for the day - a gentleman in his 60's and his mother. Their wide ranging conversation ran the gamut of topics, including cultural and political affairs - in other words, I don't remember all they talked about. One thing that does stick in my mind though, they talked about voting in Belgium. Evidently, voting is compulsory in Belgium, and they have several different elections they're required to vote in: European Parliament, Chamber of Representatives, Parliament of the Regions, provisional councils, and municipal councils. When they vote, they get a stamped card to prove that they cast their ballot, and sometimes they'll have to show the card, or pay a fine. Additionally, in the past non-voters might have had difficulty getting a job in the public sector; since 2003 though, offenders are rarely prosecuted.

After lunch, we found our way back over to St. Boniface Bridge, and found the watercolor guy. While the wife was picking out her watercolor, another artist was standing a little back from us, cutting a piece of paper. The wife asked him what he was doing, and he'd cut a silhouette of me while I was standing there waiting. We bought it from him (because we hadn't seen anything like that). Pretty inventive, and after looking at my ugly mug in the mirror for a few decades now, it's a pretty good likeness - check it out for yourself!

Afterward, we wandered around town a bit more and found our way to the Basilica of the Holy Blood. In this church, there's a vial which supposedly contains the blood of Jesus on a cloth. It was saved by Joseph of Arimathea when he was cleaning Jesus' body for burial. Popular legend says that the vial was brought to Bruges by someone named Thierry of Alsace during the Second Crusades in 1149, but recent research found no reference to the presence of the vial in Bruges before the 1250's. Additionally, there has been no definitive evidence either proving or disproving the authenticity of the relic. We saw it, and were given a little pamphlet by the stern looking bouncer-nun who supervised our visit to the altar. I didn't see a ruler near her, but I don't doubt for a second that she'd have found something to crack us over the knuckles with if we'd even thought about touching the vial.

Afterwards we wandered over to the Church of Our Lady. We looked around the inside, then paid the fee to get into the museum portion. We followed the path around and finally found Madonna and Child, a sculpture created by Michelangelo in 1504. During our tour, the guide had told us about the history of the statue, and made the comment "Thank God George Clooney gave it back to us!" (referring to the movie The Monuments Men)

Belgium is known for their chocolate; during the tour, the guide had mentioned a specific seal to look for when buying chocolate. Evidently there are only 9 chocolatiers in the city who are members of the Bruges Chocolate Guild, and produce their chocolate by hand at their local facility. We encountered one of these shops, and did our part stimulating the local economy.

We did some more random shopping around town and ended up having dinner back in the room.

Sunday morning, there was a farmer's market that I wanted to check out, so we drove over there. We wandered around among the townspeople and bought a big wheel of cheese and the wife had a waffle (something else Belgium is known for).

In researching this post, I discovered something interesting about Belgium: It's the only flag in the world with a ratio of 1.154 (13:15). You may not find that interesting, and that's okay. Don't put it in your blog then. My blog, my rules. Since I'm writing about flags, turns out that there are only 2 countries in the world with square flags, and we went to both of them when we lived in Italy - Switzerland and Vatican City. See? We're learning random stuff together!

The guide had mentioned a free shuttle to the train station from the market square downtown, so we asked at the front desk and figured out where to go to catch it. We got off a block away from the main square and headed over toward an attraction our guide recommended (second lie coming up!): the Historium.

It starts with a little 6 minute long "virtual reality" tour of what the boats went through to get into the town, with the cheesy voice in your ear telling you to look to the left to see the Belfry, and describing the cranes to you. Mine wasn't adjusted properly, so to look at something "straight ahead", I had to look down in the direction of my left knee. Probably should have skipped that part of the Historium. 

After that, you follow the glowing footprints through seven or eight rooms, across two or three floors. The door opens automatically at the proscribed time and you enter the next room, to be shown an installment of a gripping drama about some kid named Joshua (I think), who was an apprentice to Jan van Eyck. One of van Eyck's most famous paintings is "The Virgin and Child with Canon van der Paele". Joshua was supposed to go to the dock and pick up the parrot that is pictured in that work, and escort the model (Anna was her name in the movie) back to the studio. The cage broke, the parrot escaped, and Anna took off looking for the parrot. Joshua looked unsuccessfully for the parrot and Anna for a while, then decided to go to the rosary maker to get his rosary (which was damaged in the fight after the parrot) replaced.

Eventually, after seven or eight rooms, he found Anna and recaptured the parrot. J-dawg ended up marrying Anna. I can't be bothered to try and find the name of the model (or any biographical information about her) - it's enough that the guide lied to me to get me to sit through that - I hope he got a good kickback from the Historium. Truly should have skipped this part too. That's an hour of my life I'm not gonna get back.

After that, I needed a beer (another thing Belgium is known for!), so we headed to the beer museum. I won't bother to describe it to you... if you need a lesson on how to brew beer, let me know and I'll set something up for you. Best part though, we got three beers with our tour. I happened across a beer that I really enjoyed, and the boss liked mine more than the one she selected. We ended up buying 3 four packs of it later in the week. The boss was impressed by the menu system that they used - they had magnum bottes available that had color coded flags across the top to tell you what they had on tap, with the color coding letting you know what language it was in:

We popped into the restaurant from the day before, and were able to find a table - the onion soup was worth the wait. Seemed a bit like French Onion Soup... but don't tell the Belgians I said that. Seems like it might be a touchy subject.

Next up was more shopping - didn't buy anything in particular, just helped support the local economy.

We found our way to De Halve Maan brewery. Beer has been brewed in that same location for over 500 years, but the current brewery has only been in operation since 1856 - still family owned, in its fifth generation.

Couple of fun things about this brewery... beer is still brewed at that location, but the tour takes you through all of the old area, and there is no definition of the word "accessible" which would cover that old building. The guide said there were something like 222 steps on the tour, and some of the stairs should really be called ladders instead. The portions of the building that we toured were definitely historical; we climbed all the way to the attic, then through a portal onto the roof, so she could show us the beautiful view of the city. She called our attention to a building around 2 miles off in the distance, and explained that as the beer had gotten more popular, they needed to expand their operation to keep up with demand. Unfortunately, their current location just didn't have the space to expand, but they wanted to stay in the same (historical) location. Their solution: a beer pipeline. They crowdfunded part of the cost and laid a pipeline to an area of town with cheaper real estate, and built a bottling facility there. The beer runs 3276 meters (a little over 10,700 freedom units - about 2 miles), and at its deepest, runs 34 meters (112 feet) under the surface. The beer that runs through the pipeline hasn't been fermented - that takes place at the bottling facility. Their most famous beer is called Brugse Zot (Bruges Fool, in English) - we got a 4 pack of that as well.

Here's a representation of the beer pipeline (not the actual pipeline):

That's in the entryway to the brewery, just a porthole showing the approximate size of the two pipes that run across the city.  

We were already halfway back to the hotel by then, so we just walked the rest of the way - the wife snapped a couple of cool pics:

 Had dinner in the room from a local fast food restaurant.

We left Monday morning on our way to The Hague. I'd planned a special stop that would add about a half hour to our trip, and give us a nice place to have lunch. On the way there (while still in Belgium), we stopped at a supermarket to look for a couple of Belgian beers we particularly liked. No dice (at that store), but the wife found a six pack of some beer that has gnomes on the label. One of her previous coworkers' husband has a thing for gnomes, so we're always on the lookout for things to send her to mess with her (as she's not a big fan of the little buggers). Of course, we had to get it. You'll see a picture later. 

If y'all have paid attention to my previous posts, you know that I like to look for interesting (to me, anyway) and off the beaten path places. I was looking around Atlas Obscura for ideas, and found a cool restaurant... so I planned our lunch accordingly.

SEE?!?!? I've got one foot in Belgium, and one in the Netherlands! Worth the detour, I'd say.

Lunch in the restaurant was fine, and I finally got to try a beer that I'd been wanting to try - simply because of the name. 

Just look at it - isn't that a wonderful name for a beer? I saw a neon sign for it in a bar window in Bruges (next to a Stella sign) and just knew I needed to try it, simply because of the name. Kwak. It makes such a strong statement. Unfortunately, based on the picture on the label, that statement is "Ducks make a different noise in Belgium." They missed a prime opportunity with their labels - all of their different beers have different grains in place of the guy's head. They could have had the same guy in the suit, but instead of different grains, use different duck heads. Unfortunately, they didn't ask me. I have, however, sent an email with that suggestion to their customer service team. They're owned by AB-InBev, so I don't expect to ever hear anything back, but... you never know.

After lunch, we found another supermarket in town and looked for our Belgian beers... SCORE! We found all of them we'd been looking for... except for my Kwak. I'll keep looking, but I'll post a pic of our final collection at the bottom of the post.

We continued our drive to The Hague. As an aside, I did some research on that pesky capital T. Interestingly enough, the "T" in "T"he Netherlands is never capitalized (unless it's the first word in a sentence, obviously). The "T" in "T"he Hague is always capitalized. Now we all know. I think I'll be able to remember that.

Now.... what happened in The Hague? We've been there enough times that it feels like a second home and I just need to hit the highlights, rather than a day by day diary. Standard stuff... the boss brings home the bacon, I fry it up in the pan. One day, I took the tram up to the beach area to visit a guitar store that I hadn't seen before... mostly higher end basses, nothing for less than about €1500 - way out of my price range... if I were in the market for another... which I'm not... at this point, anyway. Found a cool little shopping area in that direction that we'll have to explore more closer to summer. Most of the stores were closed, or had limited hours, but it looked like a cool little area.

I got another hat, a handsome little lightweight blue fall hat. Wore it a couple of times, but it's really too cold for it, since it doesn't have ear flaps that fold down. Better for cool fall afternoons, not a bitterly cold winter.

Went to tapas one night with the wife.

Finally found my Kwak at a local market in The Hague, right down the street from our hotel. Got 2 four packs on it. Speaking of beer for the final time, here's a pic of our overall haul... one 6 pack of the Gnome beer, two 4 packs of my Kwak, 1 four pack of Bruges Fool, 1 four pack of Duvel (a very popular beer in Bruges), and three 4 packs of my fruit beer I found at the beer museum:

And just so I'm not leaving you with a beer pic, here are a couple more shots:

This is from the roof of the brewery; over my right shoulder, you see the big blocky red building? That's the auditorium, and between that building and me, we're blocking your view of the bottling plant where the pipeline terminates. The auditorium is about halfway there.

Here's the waffle truck I got the boss's waffle from at the farmer's market. You can see me with my hood up. I didn't know that she was going to take the pic, or I would have found some other place to be.

A pic of both of us at one of the famous picture spots, taken by our guide. Supposedly a famous spot because you can see three famous landmarks from there, but I'm only counting one (the Belfry tower on the left side of the pic). All the others are blocked by yours truly. Sorry 'bout it.

That's all for now - watch this space for more adventures!

(Oh yeah, and if you have any questions, just ask! If I don't know the answer, I'll find it. If I can't find it, I'll make up an answer.)

You want more Christmas Markets? We'll give you more Christmas Markets!

So we had our first "real" visitor this past week; long term readers (from our tour in Italy) will remember the wife's friend Nancy, who came to visit us in Rome. She made the trek to come see us in Frankfurt as well. She flew in last Thursday.

The wife had to work Thursday and Friday, so I went to the airport to pick Nancy up by myself. I'd given her the layout of the airport and what steps she'd have to go through... and then she landed at the other terminal, so all of my instructions were completely worthless. I was able to figure out where she would be coming out of the secure area and met her as she came out of customs.

We came home and lounged around the house for a few hours (until the wife got off), then we went down and met the boss at her office to head down to the local Christmas markets. Frankfurt's got several Christmas markets; we explored most of them. Glühwein, dinner, munchies... there's a specific booth that we found last year that makes a pasta that the wife likes. They take the pasta and load it up with whatever you want, then mix it all up in a giant wheel of (I think) pecorino, so every time we make it down to the Frankfurt market, she likes to get some.

Friday morning, Nancy and I hung out around the house, made a quick trip to Selgros (our local version of Costco) and Globus (kinda like our version of Walmart). The wife got off and we spent the evening hanging around the house, having a meal of cheese and crackers.

Saturday we left for Munich. My folks had flown into Zurich (or another city in Switzerland - not sure which one) and were taking a train to Munich for a river cruise, so we planned on meeting them there. They're taking the cruise with some long term friends of the family, Mike & Susan Shaw (think 40ish years). We checked into our hotel and took the metro down to meet up with them. They had some issues with the train, and ended up getting into Munich a couple of hours late. We met up with the Shaws at the train station and met my folks' train. We all schlepped their luggage over to their hotel a couple of blocks away - say what you'd like about my mother, but for a 22 day European safari, that woman doesn't pack light.

Mike's been to Munich a few times over the years, so he knows the city pretty well. He knew the best restaurants, so we ate and explored the markets.

Here's my mom & Susan Shaw, posing in a sleigh:

Sunday morning, I headed over and met my folks and the Shaws for breakfast. We wandered around the markets for a little while, but the markets weren't immediately open, so it was a little nice not having to deal with the crowds (even though we couldn't buy anything yet). Nancy and the wife took the metro a little later and met up with us shortly after the markets opened. We hung out and wandered around all day long, and split off from the rest of the group early afternoon to head back to our hotel.

We took a break and warmed up, then found directions to another Christmas market closer to us; most of the markets are in the downtown area but the boss found one that's in a place called the "English Garden." There's a 1400 acre park in Munich, and they set up a Christmas market there. A few of the nice things about it: it's more traditional, it's not nearly as crowded as the ones downtown, and there weren't nearly as many tourists. Matter of fact, let's forget I talked about it at all. You'll see a couple of other Christmas market pics later, but here's one of the crowd from this market for comparison:

Here's a pic of the horse-drawn wagon that was circling the market (a little blurry - sorry!):

The English Garden is also famous as one of the most well known river surfing places in the world, including during the winter months. Unfortunately, it was too dark by the time we found our way to the park, so we didn't bother going to the two spots where they surf. I'm pretty sure that they were out surfing during the day, but wasn't willing to wander around in the pitch black looking for these two specific spots on the river without knowing exactly where I was going.

My folks are coming to visit us after their river cruise, and we'd offered to bring any stuff they were through with to our place, so I went to their hotel straight from the park to pick up an extra suitcase that they wouldn't need until they got to us. The girls took a bus back to our hotel instead, and I took the metro from downtown afterward.

Next morning we got up and did breakfast then hit the road to Salzburg, which has become one of our favorite cities. On the way into town we were planning on stopping for lunch at the Stiegl Brewery, but it was still a little early. We passed the Red Bull Hangar 7 museum on our way into town, so we decided to burn some time there first. You might have read about it in the entry covering Palmer's visit:

Nancy asked that I pass this along (but I have no personal information about it - you'll have to ask her): The bathrooms at Hanger 7 are the best bathrooms in Europe. There. I passed it along. Don't know what it means, but she specifically asked that I post about them.

We had lunch at Stiegl, then headed downtown to visit the town and the Christmas markets. Afterward, we checked into the hotel to get off of our feet and warm up a bit. We came back down and drove over to the Augustiner Beerhall for dinner, then the boss wanted to take a picture of the town (all lit up) from one of the bridges. 

Next morning, we had breakfast then planned to hit the road. Driving between Salzburg and Frankfurt only takes about 5 hours, so we'd planned to hit the Christmas markets in Nuremburg on our way, but if we hit the road immediately we'd get there before the markets opened, so we decided to find something to do to waste some time first.

On the hill above Salzburg, there's a massive fortress that looks down on the town. We decided to visit it while we were "wasting time." Construction on the fortress started in the year 1077. There's a funicular that takes you from the level of the town up to the fortress (and back), but in researching this post, turns out there's another funicular that accesses the fortress as well, and sources suggest that this second funicular might very well be the oldest railway in the world, as it dates back to around 1495.

The tour suggested that Emperor Franz Joseph (one of the members of the Habsburg dynasty, from our previous entries for Vienna and Prague) might have had something to do with the fortress, but I haven't been able to figure it out with my basic googling; I did find out that he was the one who opened the fortress to visitors back in 1860. Franz Joseph was uncle to Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination kicked off World War I. A couple of other "interesting" things my googling found...

1. The castle has only been attacked one time, in 1525... by the townspeople of Salzburg, who were unhappy with the archbishop. Somehow, the fortress survived.
2. The fortress has its own coat of arms: a lion holding a turnip. I can't tell if the lion has opposable thumbs or not, but it's not like thumbs could make the crest any more odd.

(the funicular, from the bottom looking up)

After we were done we drove to Nuremburg for the Christmas markets there. Nuremburg is known for having one of the most extensive Christmas markets in Germany; we ended up parking in a different place than normal, so we didn't walk in the usual way (through the entire market). We did manage to find it though, and wandered around until one of us got tired of dealing with the crowds. At that point, I went back to the car and volunteered to drive back and pick the girls up when they were done. The boss eventually texted me an address, and I drove into town to get them.

The drive home was only a couple of hours, but seemed to take forever, for some reason.

We got a late start on Wednesday, but eventually headed for Rüdesheim. It's one of our favorite little tourist towns. Nancy wanted to ride the gondola up to see the statue of Germania and the views of the Rhine river, so we headed up there. Spent a little while up there and headed back down. Shopped in the little stores and had a snack in the food stalls.

Next up were the Christmas markets at Wiesbaden. We were going to need to get gas by the end of the day, so I dropped the girls off a few blocks from there and headed over to the military base to fill up the tank, then headed back over and met back up with them. We walked around for a few minutes, then went down into the Ratskeller to have dinner. When you come visit, we'll go there - it's the boss's favorite place to eat.

Afterward, we headed back out for more Christmas markets.

I have a confession, dear readers (all 2 of you!) - I wimped out the next day. The girls headed up to Cologne for (yet more) Christmas markets, and I sat around the house doing laundry instead. Just too much time with too many people around. Cologne is about a two hour drive, so they drove up mid morning (left around 9), and got home around 9 that night. You'll have to ask them about Cologne. Evidently, they went to the Cathedral, the Chocolate Museum, and the cologne store, in addition to 3 different Christmas markets, including a gnome themed one - I think you'll see a pic of that one toward the bottom of the post.

Nancy left the next afternoon. Since parking is so tight at Terminal 1, I dropped the girls off and drove over to a nearby gas station to wait, then went back and picked the wife up.

A few random pics, not sure where some of them are from, but wanted to make sure that y'all saw them all:

That's all for this trip, but I'll post another entry once my folks leave!

Quick weekend in Amsterdam...

We were originally planning on a trip to The Hague this week, so we decided to add on a few days ahead of time and head to Amsterdam for a long weekend. Then the trip to The Hague fell through, but we decided to do the Amsterdam portion anyway.

First question: How to get there? If we were going to The Hague, we'd drive - just easier that way. Without going to The Hague this week though... we could drive, we could fly (bigger pain in the butt than it's worth), we could take the train, or we could take the bus (which the wife and daughter enjoyed so much last time).

I didn't bother checking flight prices.

A train would be ~€350 (~$380) for both of us, round trip. Let's see what else is out there.

Driving, it'd be about 300 miles, and gas is right around €1.80 per liter - let's convert that, shall we? Euros to dollars, liters to gallons... carry the one, light a candle, say a quick prayer to the gods of floating currency exchange rates... about $7.40/gallon (assuming I did the math correctly), 20(ish) miles per gallon, so... about $110 in gas, and a 5 hour drive.

Bus would be ~€100 (~$108) for both of us, round trip. About a 7 hour bus ride.

So... driving or taking the bus would be about the same cost, with the bus taking about 2 hours longer (not counting getting to the main station from the house)... but with the bonus of both of us just being able to sit back and "enjoy" it. That sounds pretty good to me, time to start working on the wife. 

Wonder of wonders (mostly to get me to shut up, I think), she finally acquiesced. 

We left late Friday morning and walked to the local subway station, and took it down to the main station in Frankfurt.

The ride there was uneventful from my perspective, but the boss didn't have the best trip, mostly due to a miscommunication. Our bus on the way there departed at 1:00pm for an 8:00pm arrival. Our return trip was a little earlier, 10:00am to 5:00pm. Somehow the 5:00pm number got stuck in her head, so on the trip there, she asked how much longer we had, and I gave her the remaining time until 8:00pm. She was mentally prepped to be on the bus until 5:00pm, so when I added on 3 hours out of nowhere, it made the trip seem even longer for her. Also, for one or two legs of the trip, there was a crying baby a few rows back. By the end of the journey, she was questioning all of the life choices she'd made to put her in that situation. I, on the other hand, had my headphones on and watched a few episodes of a show. Didn't even hear the baby. Or the three fellows loudly speaking in another language. I thoroughly enjoyed the ride. The boss, not so much.

Amsterdam has an absolutely superb transit system (which we'll talk about a few times a little later), but we didn't feel like dealing with it (the wife was pretty much over it at this point), so we just took an Uber to the hotel.

When we got to the hotel, the lobby was completely full, fifteen people waiting in line. Rather than waiting in line, we checked in online via the app and sat in front of the fireplace until the online check-in processed. When the line died down, she went up to the desk; turns out with the weather issues going on in other parts of Europe, multiple flights had been cancelled, and the airlines hadn't booked enough rooms for all their stranded passengers... so all of those folks had just hopped on a random hotel shuttle from the airport hoping to get rooms. Spoiler alert: they didn't.

We did. Not sure how it worked out this way, but we ended up with an upgrade to a "Penthouse Room" on the top floor, with a king sized bed and a balcony. Sometimes there's a glitch in the matrix and a blind squirrel really does find a nut.

Sometimes the showers in our hotels haven't been worth talking about; this one definitely merits a quick mention. I've discussed my favorite hotel shower in the past (the luxurious triple headed thunder dome at the Hilton in The Hague), this one was the second best shower I've encountered over here. Well sealed shower enclosure, tons of pressure, lots of hot water... come to think of it, my number one and two showers were both in upgraded rooms. Perhaps that's a pattern that needs more investigation. I'll report back to the class when I have more data. At our upgraded suite for our first visit to Salzburg, the shower didn't make that much of an impression on me, so perhaps it's just luck of the draw. I guess we'll have to stay in some more high end rooms to get a larger sample size. I'll talk with the boss about that.

After breakfast Saturday morning, we headed out. Our hotel was a couple of blocks down from an R-Net station... I need to break off and talk about the transit system in The Netherlands (with that pesky CaPiTaLiZeD THE) for a moment.

All of the transit systems in The Netherlands use a card. You can buy a rechargeable card, or just use a credit card. You scan your card when you enter the system (get on the bus, enter the metro station, etc.) and then scan when you leave the system (exit the bus, etc.) and it decrements the amount on your transit card or charges your credit card. With our frequent trips to The Hague, we got some of the transit cards that we recharge occasionally and just keep them with us - makes getting around over there much easier! Those same cards work on all of the transit systems in all of the cities, so having them this visit to Amsterdam made transit much easier this time around (we hadn't gotten the cards yet last time, so we just used our credit cards).

Now, Amsterdam's transit system in particular. Amsterdam has trains which connect to other cities, subway lines which travel throughout the city, trams and buses which navigate some of the more major streets within the city... and then they've got something cool called "R-Net." They're normal buses, but for some of the route they travel on dedicated streets which run (sometimes) next to main streets. They have long sections of elevated roadway specifically for the R-Net system, dedicated tunnels... but the buses jump over into regular traffic for parts of the routes too. One of the coolest transit systems I've seen. Last time we visited Amsterdam, we caught a specific bus on the R-Net system (#300, if you're wondering) on an elevated platform about a quarter mile from our hotel.

This time around, we were about 5 miles (as the R-Net drives) from where we stayed last time, and it was on the same line (the aforementioned #300). The R-Net stop was about a quarter mile away from our hotel, across the main highway. Fortunately, there was a dedicated underpass for pedestrians and bicycles. Unfortunately, it had been wet, and the temp had been hovering around freezing for a few days. The boss discovered a patch of ice... she discovered it with her butt though, because her eyes evidently didn't catch it as she approached. No damage to anything but her pride, thankfully.

So we got to the bus stop and waited for our friend, the #300. We got on a few minutes later, and misremembered where exactly that bus would be taking us. We ended up riding it to the end, a major subway station a ways out of town. We took a subway train back into town, and promised each other that we'd look up our route next time, rather than just assuming.

We had tickets for something later - we'll get there, hold your horses! - so we had to burn a little bit of time. I got my "spidey-sense" reoriented and we wandered in the right general direction. In our travels throughout the city, we passed a mall that we hadn't had a chance to visit last time we were here, and y'all know my affinity for malls, right? So we went in, expecting... I don't know, possibly some stores? There were "some" stores. I think the absolute minimum number of stores that you could have and still be considered "some," rather than "a couple." I think there were 3 stores. One of them was a cheese store. Oh, cheese stores. Let's talk about those for a second!

We have a cheese store that we visit every time we're in The Hague, it's part of our routine. They have over 30 locations across Europe (including one here in Frankfurt). Amsterdam, though... they've got some cheese stores. I think there are 13 stores from this one company across Amsterdam. We saw 6 of them during the time that we were there. One of them was in that mall.

While wandering, we found a little cafe on a canal and had some gluhwein. We didn't get to keep those mugs though. They were just plain glass mugs. Eh.

Our ticketed time was coming up, so we headed over to... the Anne Frank Museum. 

Everybody has heard the story of Anne Frank, so I won't turn this into a history lesson. I will say though - if you're ever in Amsterdam, do yourself a favor and go through the museum. We paid an additional €7.00 each for an introductory program that I'd highly recommend. One of the docents from the museum takes your group back into one of the classroom areas and gives about a 30 minute talk, giving a good overview of The Netherlands during World War II, why the Jewish people flocked to The Netherlands as war approached, and the plight of the Jewish people in The Netherlands during the war. Then she focused on the Frank family, the people who were in hiding with them, and the people who helped them stay hidden for over 2 years. After covering the story, she took some questions, then led us out to the museum itself.

Buildings in Amsterdam were historically taxed by their width, which explains why most of the buildings you see are so narrow. The spice factory where the Frank family hid was no different. The building is no more than about 20 feet wide, but 4 stories high, and quite deep. The offices and factory were in the portion of the building toward the canal/street, and in the bottom 2 floors of the back half. The hidden apartment was only reachable via an opening behind a bookcase on the second floor (third floor for us Yanks). The apartment is around 450 square feet total. That's the equivalent of about a 21 x 21 room. For 8 people. For 2 years.

The tour through the factory had an audio guide where you'd hold your guide up to a plaque on the wall, and the audio would tell you about that room or picture. At the point where you entered the hidden apartment, the audio guide stopped, which I think was a good idea, honestly. The silence had more impact than an audio guide could have.

All of their possessions were removed from the apartment, and Otto Frank (the only one who lived through the war) didn't want anything else put in there, so all of the rooms are empty. The only things remaining from their time in the apartment are cut out pictures from magazines (that I haven't been able to verify, but we believe are the original items), and a couple of maps that they used to track the movements of allied soldiers in their efforts to defeat the Germans. All of the pictures on the walls of the apartment are covered by plexiglas, and the boss and I agree that to the best of our knowledge, they're the original items... but I've been unable to confirm that (just to be 100% honest with y'all!).

Quite a sobering place. Normally, I don't get too into the normal tourist spots (I tend to go more for quirky places like Pig Museums), but I'd highly recommend the intro and tour if you ever have the opportunity.

Afterward, we wandered around for a while. The wife had heard about an "Amsterdam Light Festival" canal tour, and decided she wanted to do it. We wandered over to the main harbor area, but the area where the boats left from was an absolute madhouse, so we figured we'd buy tickets online for the next evening.

We hadn't purchased any cheese at any of the myriad shops that we'd passed (because we didn't want to carry it through the museum), so we got a bite to eat at a local restaurant then visited a couple of cheese shops to sample (and buy) some of the current flavors.

We walked to the central station and took the subway to a major station closer to our hotel, then boarded our trusty #300 steed. As we got off the bus, we heard some pretty loud explosions nearby... as we started toward the hotel, a group of "kids" (early 20's, by the looks of them) were setting off fireworks on the walking path that led underneath the main roadway. Luckily, they stopped as we approached, but by the time we got halfway under the main road, they'd started up again. Oddly enough, once we got back to the hotel we didn't hear them again, but I don't know if they just got tired of being jackasses, or if the people in the nearby houses called the police.

Sunday after breakfast, we walked to the bus station and bused into town. The wife wanted to check out one of the big museums (the Rijksmuseum) so we got off there. It's in the same area as the van Gogh museum that we went to last time we were there.

One of the buses we rode, we saw the cutest little girl, probably around 4 years old, riding the bus with her dad. She was singing "Wheels on the Bus" in Dutch.

Being a foreigner in all these countries we have visited has helped me develop a healthy respect for foreign languages; while Dutch is linguistically quite similar to German, the tone used by most native speakers of Dutch unfortunately makes their language sound to me like the gibberish used by the Swedish Chef on the Muppets.

Now, picture an adorable 4 year old girl using that language to the tune of "Wheels on the bus." You may or may not find yourself amused, but I had a hard time not giggling good naturedly at her. 

While we've been over here, the wife has developed an affinity for Vincent van Gogh, so we have to check major museums in every city to see if there are any of his works there. In Amsterdam there's a dedicated van Gogh museum that we visited last time we were there. She thought there might be some works of his at the main museum in town, so of course we had to go there as well.

There was a line to go in, and we were able to figure out while waiting that tickets had to be bought online. We stepped out of line and visited their web site, bought tickets, then got back into line. We went in and got our audio guides and headed in the direction of one of the wings.  We started wandering through, then I turned around and my wife had disappeared. A few minutes later, I got a text from her that she'd meet me at the info desk in an hour and a half.

That's right, my loving and devoted wife dragged me into an art museum and ditched me.

She told me later that she had a list of things that she wanted to see, and since we only had a limited amount of time she figured it'd make more sense if she just took off on her own. Sounds really "loving and devoted," right?

I wandered around on my own for a while, encountered Rembrandt's The Night Watch and a bunch of other old paintings.

As an aside, I find it interesting how artists are popularly addressed:

• Vincent van Gogh: van Gogh
• Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (literally "Leonardo, son of ser Piero from Vinci", because there must have been several other guys named Leonardo, son of ser Piero): Leonardo da Vinci (because those other Leonardo, son of ser Piero guys didn't end up amounting to much)
• Claude Monet: Monet
• M.C. Escher: Escher
• Gustav Klimt: Klimt
• Johannes Vermeer: Vermeer
• Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn: Rembrandt

At the appointed time, the wife showed up at the info desk and selected me from the crowd of significant others patiently waiting, like a Lost & Found for the uncultured. I guess I should consider myself lucky that she picked me, rather than one of the others waiting - she could have traded up instead!

We had tickets for a tour of the Heineken building, so we walked over there next. Our tickets were for "The Heineken Experience," which is basically a tour of their old beer making facility - all of the grain silos, still room, etc. There are portions of it which are guided by one of their employees, and portions which are self guided. You listen to info given by one of the guides, then wander off further into the building. After going through a couple more areas, you'll find another employee spouting off random information. Then more self-guided stuff. Well done, informative displays... honestly, we've been through a few brewery tours and this point, and... this was a brewery tour.

One fun thing: the day before our tour, I got an email from them which included the following video (which we really liked!)

After our tour, we had tickets for the "Rooftop Experience," which is an exclusive little bar that they've got on top of the building. As you saw in the video (you DID watch it, right?!?!?) it was in the mid forties while we were there, so we didn't spend a lot of time outside, just walked out to see the view, and then went back in to the bar area. They had 4 different "mocktails" made with Heineken... well, 3 different "mocktails" made with Heineken and 1 made with alcohol free Heineken, so I guess a "mock-mocktail?"

I looked up places to eat nearby (as the boss had been drinking on an empty stomach and was a little giggly for a while), so we went to a nearby restaurant.

You remember that "Light Festival" I told you about earlier? She had talked me into buying tickets online for it, so we walked across town and arrived just in time for our boarding. She hadn't heard anything about the festival except for the name, so she assumed that the "Light" portion of the name referred to Christmas lights (what with Christmas rapidly approaching and all). That wouldn't have been too bad.

Instead, we were crammed into an overloaded tour boat for a 90 minute (!) tour of a modern art installation. At several points throughout the city (I can't be bothered to check how many, but it was probably close to 20), there were AI generated artistic light installations, usually with faceless glowing white figures standing in random positions. The captain has several interesting little Amsterdam facts he shared with us, but mostly it was a computer generated voice telling us about how we (as a society) have let technology take over our lives, while seeing installations on the sides of random canals... like a featureless white face press its way out of a featureless white rectangle that's supposed to signify a cell phone screen.

 I'm not the biggest fan of "this is art because I say it's art," so I didn't enjoy it much. It was too hot (with way too many people crammed into the boat), and way too loud - it seemed like people were shouting to be heard over the running soundtrack, so you couldn't even hear the TikTok voice telling you all the random interpretive BS about the art installations. One of the girls sitting across the table from us was intent on getting video of all of the installations, so she'd frequently open the window, which would then spatter us with snowflakes. Not harmful in any way, but I was already a little annoyed, and she didn't help matters much. 0/10, would not recommend. We took the metro and bus (the trusty #300 again) back to the hotel.

Monday morning, we took an Uber to the bus station (so we didn't have to drag the luggage down the side of the road).

The bus ride was mostly uneventful, but we drove through a bit of a snowstorm, and all the roads were a little slushy. For most of the time from Cologne to Frankfurt (normally 2 hours), we were in thick traffic, and I was extremely glad that we'd left the driving to someone else. It took closer to three and a half hours to get home, and sitting in traffic that long would have driven me crazy if I was the driver. This way, neither of us had to deal with it. We took the subway home from the main train station and walked home in the snow from our local subway station.

You may have noticed a dearth of pics in this post... the boss sent me a handful of pics but... they were just of things around town. Here are a couple of them, just so I can say I included some:

So, that's it for now, but we'll have another entry within the next week or so!

Palmer's Last Hurrah...

So when last we spoke, Palmer and I had just finished up a trip to Salzburg. Once the boss got back to town, we decided to take him on a last road trip to Prague.

We packed up the car and drove there on Thursday arriving in late afternoon. Our hotel was (surprise, surprise) right next to a mall. 

It was too late to start touring the town that evening, so we went over to the mall and ate in the food court, and stocked up with snacks at the grocery store.

Next day, we toured around town a bit (reorienting ourselves to the layout of the city), and made our way to the other side of the river for our scooter tour, which started in the Lesser Quarter. 

Lemme take a break really quick and talk about the geography of Prague. There are 4 main areas of the city (that tourists are concerned about): Old Town, New Town, Lesser Quarter, and the Castle District. The Castle District lies on the west side of the river, the northernmost of the (touristy) districts on that side. The Lesser Quarter is down the hill from the castle, still on the west side of the river. Old Town is where the majority of the tourist sites are located, on the east side of the river. New Town (which, despite its name, dates back over 800 years) is immediately south of Old Town, still on the Vltava River. Our hotel was on the east side of the river, a couple of metro stops east of Old Town.

We were in a small group, 5 of us plus the guide. Me, the boss, and the boy were on electric scooters, the other 2 tourists were on motorized electric tricycles, and the guide was on an electric assisted bicycle. Our route stretched from the Lesser Quarter down to the river, down the river to the castle, and followed the crest of the hill south from the castle past our starting point, then back down the hill. We got lots of pics. These will be out of order, but I'll throw them in anyway.

While we were waiting for our tour, we had beers next door to the place:

We saw the Lennon Wall, which John Lennon never saw or visited (named because of the graffiti that espouses freedom, western culture, and political struggle):

A weird little pond with two guys peeing in it... the guys buttocks can be moved left and right, and the... nozzles (for lack of a more appropriate term) can be moved up and down. Makes some sort of political statement, including that the left-most gentleman is peeing on the approximate location of Prague, somehow telling the people to be mindful of who they put in office... as the story was relayed to us, anyway:

An overlook of the city, from the northern end of the Castle District. On the far side of the river, you can see some of the buildings of the Old City... I believe the closest twin spires in the middle right of the pic are the Church of Our Lady before Týn, which dates to the 1300's. This church is on the main square in the Old City, across from the Astronomical Clock:

An overview of the city from the south end of the Lesser Quarter... if you look in the center of the pic, you can see a small portion of the river; the preceding pic was taken from among the trees you can see on the left of the river. Basically, another angle of the city center:

Afterward, we wandered around the city for a while, and found ourselves in the Prague Ice Bar... essentially a walk in freezer turned into a tourist site. Basically, you pay about $10 to go into a freezer that's -8 degrees Celsius (about 17 degrees Fahrenheit). You get one drink with your admission, and can buy additional drinks for between $4.00 and $6.50. You could get a bottle of Heineken or a vodka based drink. They had blocks of ice with cylinders cut out of the middle of them with a shot of vodka in each, and you'd tell them what kind of juice you wanted in it: cranberry, orange, or cactus. We each had a different flavor. Don't let me kid you - my description of it sounds dorky, but it was actually pretty cool (cool, get it? Because it was a... you know what? If I have to explain it, it loses something. Try to keep up!). Here are a few choice pics from inside - I had to keep putting my phone back into my pocket. Over about a minute out in the cold, and it would quit working until I'd warmed it back up in my pocket.

During our wandering around town, we encountered the same antique store where the wife had found her steins during the last trip - thankfully, she didn't encounter anything this time around that she couldn't live without.

The next day, it seemed like every time we turned around, plans didn't work out for us. Whether it was a museum where there were only tours at specific times (the Cold War Museum), or being unable to find a museum (supposedly a free museum somewhere in town), or yours truly doing math wrong and insulting the waiter at Hard Rock Cafe with a messed up tip... more wandering that day than anything else, and nothing much to report. We did end up doing the museum of the Charles Bridge, but we had hoped to pair that together with a boat tour, and that boat vendor seemed to have a really hard sell, and just didn't feel right.

Just FYI, I'm probably going to get the order wrong on some of the things from our last day, so I'll just give you a list and you can put these into whatever order you'd prefer.

We finally did the big museum in Old Town. There seemed to be a lot of animals - an entire floor devoted to different kinds of animals, with stuffed versions of all of them. Big aquarium section, with lots of fish (and a whale skeleton hanging overhead), and a section on dinosaurs as well. Other floors had normal museum stuff, mostly about the history of Prague and the Czech Republic.

We finally got our boat ride on the Vltava River. We boarded a boat a little downriver from the Charles Bridge and rode it for about an hour upriver, then further down, and back upriver to the dock. There was a constant narration playing in the background in multiple languages, but we could barely hear it, and were never sure when we were supposed to be listening until it was too late. I'm sure that the recording shared some vital information, but I have no idea what it could have been. Unfortunately, the windows were smeared, so I didn't get any good pics while we were on the boat. Maybe we should have taken the boat ride with the hard sell instead.

A family I bumped into at the hotel had told us about "The Anonymous Bar," themed around Guy Fawkes masks (and evidently the movie "V For Vendetta" rather than the Gunpowder Plot), so we had to get a drink there. All of the bartenders wear Guy Fawkes masks - but only when they're actively serving drinks (which I think defeats the purpose of the whole concept of anonymity... but what do I know?). I had some sort of whiskey sour (with a themed name), and Palmer had a "V's Blood" (I'll share this pic, even though it's a little blurry - was an interesting concept):

The Ice Bar (from earlier in the trip) is related somehow to a Robot Bar... so we just had to go there as well. You go into the room, and there are 8 or 10 computer terminals. You sit down at one of the terminals and order from a list of drinks, and then the two robots at the front of the room make your drink. All of the drinks were pretty imaginative, and none of them did anything for me, but the boy picked one that he wanted to try, and I videoed the robots making it:

One of the delicacies that Prague is known for is something called a Chimney Cake; it's a dough that's spiraled around a cone and cooked inside and out, then covered with your choice of toppings, crushed nuts, cinnamon/sugar, etc, and optionally filled with whipped cream or ice cream. The wife and son had to have one, so we stopped at a vendor and they got one each. I tried a bit or two of the wife's cake - she thought it was a little too crisp, but I didn't think it was too bad.

Many of y'all know that I enjoy pedicures... I finally had the opportunity to get a pedicure given by fish. Yeah, go back and reread that sentence again. They have these all over the world, but I've never been able to get one before. There's a tank in the massage/nail place where they have hundreds of these little fish called "doctor fish" or "nibble fish". The lady sprays your feet down with some sort of antiseptic/cleaner, then scrubs them down with a soft brush and rinses them clean. You put your feet into a set of Crocs, and walk over to the tank, then slowly ease your feet into the tank. The fish spend the next half hour or so eating the dead skin off of your feet.

I'm horribly ticklish, y'all. These fish tickled me so much that it just didn't tickle any more.

Additionally, the tank that they put me in was in the front window of the shop... I felt like I was in the Red Light District of Amsterdam. 

People walking by on the street stopped and took pictures... one pair of guys asked me (using sign language) how much it was, so I told them with hand signals. I gave so many thumbs up, I lost count. While I was getting my feet serviced, the wife and boy were eating at a place a little ways down the street, watching people stop to gawk at me. 

10/10, will do again. I actually found some places in Frankfurt that offer fish pedicures - I'll go get one with you when you come visit!

That was the end of that evening, and the next day we drove back to Frankfurt. Palmer flew home the next day, and is settling back into his normal schedule.

That's all for now - see you here next time!