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15 June: Paris, France
Walking around Paris without destination. Stacey shopped, I looked around. We're very, very tired and Paris is starting to blur.
16 June: Brusells, Belgium
Checked out of the hotel and drove to Belgium. Uneventful drive. Getting around Brussels seems to be sheer insanity, and I'm glad its a Saturday. I did the laundry whilst Stacey caught up on her journaling and sleep. Had a lot of trouble finding an ATM that works. Brussels' main square, the Gross Markt, had a cool concert with a big band playing "What a Wonderful World." I got a couple of the "American" sandwiches which is hamburger with ketchup on a sandwich roll... but it's covered with fries. Mmmm... Can't find it in America but one should.
17 June: Brusells, Belgium
At this point, all the sites in the world are pretty irrelevant. We get a belgian beer in the square. We got a really bad Brusells wafel in the main square, and then get an awesome Liege wafel a block away. Belgian wafels are awesome, just make sure you get the Liege waffels! Belgian beer is also wonderful. Stacey fell in love with the Frites here in Belgium.
We did walk around the town a bit and did window shopping. I found a bunch of Euro-related stores and tried to find some cool stuff. Nothing caught my fancy. We did a lot of hanging out and talking, which is nice. After so much beer and wafels, you can't do much else.
18 June: Brusells to Brugge, Belgium
Brusells is one of the cooler large cities we've been in, but Brugge is much, much cooler. We drove in around 2pm and found the hotel with an ease that seems incomprehensible. Parked right underneath the Ibis hotel, checked in without any effort, and found a very cosy and large room overlooking a courtyard. A block away from the hotel is a church with the largest brick spire in Benelux, and containing a Michelangelo statue. The pieta was very cool, and was one of the only pieces of his work to leave Italy in his lifetime. And it was free.
We walked to the main square and fell in love with the town. Brugge is just the cutest town. The main square has a bunch of flamboyant gothic buildings, a gigantic brick belfry with a couple awesome fry stands in front (I love Curryketchup). Across are a bunch of stair-step roofed resaurants each of which is overpriced but cute as a button. We did the walk recommended in the Rick Steves' book to Burg Square and were thoroughly disappointed. The TI wasn't much help, so we went back to the main square and got a Straffe Hendrik beer and talked for a while. Very cool. Another portion of frites and we went back to the hotel to get another beer and chill some more. Ahhhh....
19 June: Brugge, Belgium
Only thing on tap for today was the Straffe Hendrik Brewery Tour. We sauntered out of the hotel around 12u, and wanted to get some food first. So we went to the Pizza Hut (got to get used to American food again...) After a quite pleasant meal, we walked around the town and made our way back to the brewery. Back in a courtyard, the tour started at the top of the hour. Our tour guide was cute and multilingual to the hilt. She would give the same spiel in both German and English, making the same joke, and getting the equivalent roars of laughter. Most of the brewery stuff is done off site now, so it's a museum of the original Maes brewery which was bought by a big conglomerate a while ago. It was Stacey's first brewery tour, and it's the best I've been on. And you get a free beer at the end.
After that we did some window shopping; Stacey bought a stuffed animal that we eventually named Sugar. We went back to the market square and did some more people watching. Whilst in front of the frites stand we happened upon a Rick Steves' tourist who was travelling all over the place in 10 days time. We directed her towards the good wafel place and chatted with an American we didn't know and that didn't annoy the hell out of us (like the couple on a bike that butted in). We made our way back to the hotel for more beer and some dinner.
20 June: Gambling throughout Belgium and Amsterdam
First thing we did after we checked out was pack up the car with the convertable compartment up (i.e. you can't take the top down). Bad idea. 5 miles down the road we took the top down. We ended up on this small deviation that took us past a sheep and cow pasture. The large trucks ahead allowed us to go rather slowly, which was nice.
Casino Knokke
Our destination was the Casino with Eccentric Art in Knokke-Heist. It's only 18 km from Brugge and was, in a sense, on the way to the Playing Card Museum. This is a beach town. As soon as we got into the main part of the town, it was like we entered Nice, except with the really slow cars replaced by really slow bikes. After a minor detour we parked by the TI and found on the map that we were about a 15 minute walk away. No problem as we sauntered down the beach staring at the restaurant goers on the beach who were staring at us. Finally we saw the Casino with a big advertisement for a Magritte Exhibition. It was 200BF ($4.50) to enter, and let me tell you it was well worth it!
Rene Magritte, the famous surrealist, did one of his most famous works, The Enchanted Domain, as a mural in the dining room. It has many of his most famous elements, a ship made out of water, a flaming tuba, a quite misplaced leaning tower of Pisa, and a relatively sublimely painted house. Across the hall from this room is a Mural done by Keith Hering in his usual style, but with a number of homages to the the Magritte painting and the Delvaux painting of a train station on the other side of the hall.
The highlight, however, was the Magritte exhibition itself. About 50 works, including some of his most famous ones, like "This is not an apple" and "The Great War" with a picture of a woman with a flower for a face. This was so worth the drive and the price of admission. Magritte is a much more accessible surrealist compared with Dali. Simpler with a greater emphasis on the irony.
After that we walked back to the car and drove to Antwerp. After taking the long way around the city (but seeming to avoid some traffic), we drove to the smallish city of Tournhout. This was listed in Wierd Europe as the current playing card capital of europe, with a cool museum to boot. We had no idea where it was except it was four blocks south of the main square. We parked about 15 minutes away and walked there. Once we got there, we saw that it was temporarily closed for renovations. Merde! So, we went to the main square and ate and then back on the road to Amsterdam.
The drive to Amsterdam was quite uneventful except for the very, very small signs that are required to get to the hotel. We got to the hotel with very little problem, but it was on the other side of the street. Amsterdam is not a city to make U turns. After a bunch of wrong turns and almost killing a few bicyclists, I got turned around and let Stacey check in whilst I found a parking spot. More wrong turns and a small detour down a wrong way street later, I became infuriated at Amsterdam driving. I said screw it and parked at the closest place. Turns out that was across the street from the hotel. Woohoo.
We rested for a little bit then went downstairs to get some beer and some food. The beer made Stacey sleepy so we went to the room and when she fell asleep I headed out to the Holland Casino. Too bad I misread the map and nearly missed it. It's about 30 minutes walk from the hotel, past streets that reminded my of a cross between Boston, Venice, and occasionally the strip joints of southern nevada. Make a right at the Rijksmuseum and you are there. A very modern casino with an entrance fee and a coat check. I went across the street to get f300 out of the bank and see what they were spreading.
I made my way upstairs and stared at the f20-40 Texas Hold 'Em game they were playing. That's about $8-16, so I needed another f300 to play. Very soft game with one guy with f1500 in front of him and an inability to fold. After waiting for the floorman for an eternity I sit down. Great game, bad cards. I don't win a pot the entire 100 minutes I'm there. But with vegas style rake, I only end up losing about f440, or about $170. No biggie. After that I headed to the easyEverything to wind down and update the website.
21 June: Amsterdam, Netherlands
OK, I'm finding Amsterdam to be a little icky.
Rijksmuseum
I'm so not in the mood for an art museum today. But I probably won't be for weeks to come, and when in Amsterdam, you have to go see this. And frankly, it was quite good. It has one of the largest collections of Vermeer's you'll ever see (4 of the 30 known), Rembrants out the wazoo, and an artist named Jan Steen who I absolutely love. The households shown on Jerry Springer are refered to in Holland as "Jan Steen Homes." He painted drunk families, gamblers, kids doing all sorts of juvenile things. It was great. We followed the Mona Winks guidebook to try and make some sense of this gigantic museum. It's got over 200 rooms and was built specifically to house all of the Dutch great works. And it is repleat with Dutch masterworks.
The three rooms in the back with the Italian and Spanish paintings was cool, but not nearly enough. The collection of furniture and handicrafts was also memorable, mostly because the clocks are kept in working order. We walked through around 3pm and we went from 18th century clock to 18th century clock hearing the chimes. The cafe, although expensive, had some great deserts. At this point, we felt it would be good to get all the art out of the way now, so we walked the half a block to the...
Van Gogh Museum
The most shocking thing about this collection is how mediocre van Gogh seems when all you get to see is his work. Most of his early stuff is bad to average, then his innovations are crude but interesting, then the last stuff is more indicative of his mental state than any great painting. Stacey commented that without the tragic story, his fame wouldn't nearly be as great. My belief is that van Gogh's in other museums when contrasted with other work of the time makes it stand out and seem much more revolutionary than just the work of a crazy person. However, if you like van Gogh this is Mecca.
At this point we just went back to the hotel and got some food. I'm finding that I love curry, and the europeans do too. The europeans take curry, french fries, and tuna and make them the most versitile things you've ever found. Tuna fish on pizza is great. Fries with a steak is high cuisine. Curry mixed with ketchup is a rival to Mayonaise as a sauce for Frites in Holland (and it should be!) But enough of the soapbox...
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