Rainy Amsterdam

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

It poured overnight and we awoke to lots of wind and rain ranging from downpour to mist.  We decided that, rather than walk to the closest Metro station, it  be a good idea to drive to a Park and Ride lot and catch the Metro there.  It rained heavily most of the way to Amsterdam's Central Station and the tram from there to the Rijksmuseum was packed with soggy passengers.

The museum, one of Amsterdam's star attractions at any time, seemed to be everyone's top choice of how to spend this windy, rainy day.  Oddly enough, the entry line for those with advance tickets was far longer than the one for those of us arriving without them, and we were soon warm and dry.  We wandered until mid-afternoon through centuries of Dutch art.  The crowds at Rembrandt's Night Watch made extended contemplation of the masterpiece too much of a challenge, and it was easy to spot his works, and those of Vermeer, just by the groups clustered around them.

The rain had let up by the time we left the museum, so we walked along the canals streets most of the way back to the Central Station.  The wind and rain came and went, and finally got the best of us, so we hopped a tram for the last part of the trek.  It was just getting too hard to see and/appreciate our surroundings.

As we enjoyed our happy hour at home, occasional sightings of blue sky gave us hope for better wandering conditions tomorrow.  We also learned that many flights in and our of the Amsterdam airport were cancelled today due to high winds; guess we weren't the only ones who threw in the towel today!

On to the Netherlands

Monday, October 20, 2014

With mixed feelings, we left Bruges this morning. It's hard to leave a great place, but we're looking forward to what's ahead -- specifically, Amsterdam.

But first, an interesting road trip that illustrated dramatically why the meaning of The Netherlands is Low Country.  We drove along a "coastal" route that actually took us along, on top of, and through part of the country's efforts to deal with the fact that, while it has a long North Sea frontage, it is actually below sea level.  After 1800 people lost their lives in flooding in 1953, it was evident that the centuries-old system of dikes that had once held the sea at bay needed to be upgraded.  A new system of dikes and levees, along with electronic monitoring of sea levels now keeps the dry land dry.  We drove along causeways, dunes, a tunnel and bridges that are part of the land-sea demarcation; at times, we were driving on a roadway that was in a slight valley between large berms.  The Dutch long ago learned to reclaim their land from rivers and seas by using windmills to lift dammed water, channel it into canals, and drain the land.  The fertile farm land that makes up much of the country was painstakingly developed as farmers planted crops that removed salt from the soil; this now-productive earth is known as polder. We saw lots of windmills, both old school and high tech, on today's drive.

We stopped at a beautiful beach -- long, probably the widest we've ever seen, and almost certainly the windiest.  Kite flyers, parasailers, wind surfers, and carts propelled by sail and parasail were crowded along the gorgeous stretch of sand, and on the water. 
It was quite a sight!  At that point, the road we were traveling on was atop a levee, with the beach quite a distance below us.
Europe's largest port is Rotterdam, and its size was apparent as we bypassed it on the highway.Also impressively extensive were the nearby oil refinery and gasoline storage facilities that went on for miles; it the New Jersey turnpike tank farms seemed to pale in comparison.

In marked contrast was our stop in the pretty city of Delft, proud home of the 17th century painter Vermeer and the famous Royal Delft Pottery.  We wandered around the canals, bridges and quiet brick streets of the old town, which seems like a Dutch version of Bruges.

Then, it was on to our apartment in Amsterdam's southeast outskirts. We're in a quiet neighborhood, with easy parking and access to the Metro, which we'll take into the center city tomorrow.  Meanwhile, we're delighted that our apartment has now only a washing machine, but a clothes dryer, probably the first we've ever encountered in Europe!

Sunday in Ghent

Sunday, October 19

Happy birthday to our dear Kevin!

This morning's was warm and sunny, and a slight breeze was blowing autumnal leaves into the canal nearby as we set out.  Our little street and the surrounding area were part of the route of a foot race, and we enjoyed seeing the runners pass by, right through the Fish Market, and over the bridge crossing the canal.  Then, we were off on a day trip to Ghent, just 45 minutes away. 

Once the second largest city (after Paris) north of the Alps, Ghent was a center of the wool trade and textile industry.  Because of its size, rather than one central square, Ghent has several squares, most centered on a specific trade, product or guild.  Guild houses are scattered throughout the city's old center.  Three of Ghent's most important buildings are near each other, extending from the Korenmarkt, or Corn Market Square.  St. Nicholas Church is massive, solid, and soaring.  The nearby Belfry, constructed beginning in the 14th century, houses a clock tower, carillon, and -- most importantly -- an elevator.  We rode up, walked around the exterior gallery, and stopped at a couple of lower levels to wander around the bells and try to understand the workings of a carillon -- sort of like a music box, and that's as far as we got.

Back at ground level, we walked across St. Bravo Square to the Cathedral of St. Bravo, Ghent's patron saint.  Here, and also in the church of St. Nicholas, there were monuments honoring St. Peter Damien, a Flemish priest who cared for lepers in Hawaii during the 19th century.  The cathedral has an ornate rococo pulpit and an altarpiece painted by Rubens.  The cathedral's artistic treasure is the Van Eyck masterpiece, The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, which we actually returned to see later in the day, when its special viewing gallery opened.  The altarpiece is so popular that a replica is kept in the chapel for which it was originally painted, and where guides provide commentary on the work.  In the room where the original work is displayed, an audio guide explanation runs 50 minutes;we did not stay that long!  The 12-panel triptych is richly colored and detailed, the "wings" can be closed; their paintings are less colorful, perhaps to heighten the drama when the interior was revealed, originally just on Sundays and feast days.  At any rate, the altarpiece has been treasured for six centuries; it has also been endangered.  In order to prevent its destruction during the Reformation, it was hidden in the cathedral tower, in the early 20th century two panels were stolen (one never recovered), and during World War II, the altarpiece was stolen by the Nazis and eventually recovered in a salt mine.  Viewers of The Monuments Men may recall that the ultimate prize was the discovery and return of  "the Ghent altarpiece." (No photos were allowed)

We wandered through more of the old city center, past the town hall and down the narrow "Graffiti Street," where the city's spray paint artists can legally let loose before heading for the "Vegetable Market Square", where we lined up at what looked like a popular vendor's stall.  After a hungry policeman waiting for his order translated the menu for us (and recommended a few favorites), we had a lunch of Flemish beef stew -- on fries, of course!  

As the day turned cloudy and cooled, we returned to the cathedral to view the altarpiece before driving back to Bruges.

We'd deliberately planned to take our day trips to Antwerp and Ghent on the weekend to avoid an expected crush of tourists here in Bruges.  Upon our return this afternoon, we realized just how good an idea that had been.  There were mobs, throngs, hordes, crowds of people all over the center of town.  Between people, bikes, and horse-drawn carriages, our car just crawled down the streets!  We parked the car in our spot and then walked toward the outer perimeter of the old town and along the lined with parks and windmills; nobody out there but locals enjoying late Sunday afternoon strolls, bike rides, soccer games, and park benches.  

We wound our way through a quiet residential neighborhood and back to a small street off the Markt to visit a family-run chocolatier as part of our commitment to eating local.  A few last photos of the Belfort towering above the Markt, and it was time to call it a day.

We're so happy that we decided to return to Bruges and use it as our base of operations for a few days.  Now, we're ready to return to the 21st century!

A Day in Antwerp

Saturday, October 18, 2014

Belgium's second-largest city (at about 500,000 people) was the destination of our day trip, about an hour from Bruges.  We parked along the Scheldt River, the scene of a busy trading port in Antwerp's heyday.  After Bruges' harbor silted up in the 15th century, Antwerp stepped in to fill the gap, and once trade with the New World began, the arrival of goods made Antwerp Europe's wealthiest city for a time.  War and politics changed that, and the power and wealth eventually shifted to Amsterdam. 

On this Saturday, the port is quiet, but the city center is hopping.

We began in Antwerp's large central square, the Grote Markt.  Saturday is wedding day and couples and their families were coming and going from the City Hall on the square.  There was also a gathering of the family and friends of a young man who disappeared one year ago. Their white balloons and t-shirts bearing his photo, the leaflets they distributed, as well as the presence of a number of television camera, bore witness to the ongoing search for the lost man.

Elsewhere on the square, people milled around the central fountain or lounged in the cafes that occupy the ground floors of the old guild halls, topped with gilded statues, that ring the square.  The substantial guild halls bear witness to the historical power and prosperity of the merchant and trading classes in Antwerp.

Also on the square is the city's Cathedral of Our Lady, an active church and currently a bit of an art museum, as it is housing some pieces of one of the city museum's collection while the museum is undergoing renovation.  The cathedral is a soaring Gothic affair and, historically, each of the city's guilds had an altar at the foot of a pillar in the nave and or one of the six(!) aisles.  The original altarpieces were  by the guild and the chosen artists generally worked symbols of the sponsoring trade or craft into their paintings' Biblical scenes; the paintings are now displayed in their original home.  The artistic masterpieces of the cathedral are three massive altarpieces by Peter Paul Rubens, the city's most famous son.

Leaving the cathedral, we walked through the old center of the city to the pedestrian Meir, a busy shopping area.  It was full of life on this beautiful Saturday,with cyclists, shoppers, strollers, and street musicians out in force.  Antwerp is also home to Europe's first skyscraper, the KBC Tower, built in 1932, at the foot of the Meir.

After a walk on the elevated promenade along the river, we headed out of  Antwerp and back to toward Bruges.  We took a slight detour to visit the small town of Damme, about five miles away from Bruges; the canal-side road  the two towns is a popular bicycle route.  (Then again, bicyclists are everywhere in this flat part of the world.)  Damme is about four blocks long and two blocks deep, with an impressive city hall, a large church, and lots of restaurants.  The view down the canal ends with Bruges' Church of Our Lady in the distance.

 

After dinner at home, we went out for a walk and some photography on a warm and beautiful Bruges night.

Wandering through Bruges

Friday, October 17, 2014

We began this lovely fall day with a self-guided walking tour of this beautiful little city.  Bruges was a center of the cloth trade in the 11th century and, by the 14th, its population equaled that of London.  It was an important port until the harbor silted up in the 16th century, when the economy took a nosedive, political power moved elsewhere, and the city was pretty much forgotten until tourists discovered it in the 20th. Threaded with canals and former moats, it is picture perfect; Walt Disney could not have created a sweeter scene.  The throngs of tour groups following their guides through the cobblestone streets can attest to the fact that there's pretty much no reason for photographers to ever put their cameras away.

Just steps from our apartment, the vendors in the old fish market were selling everything from shrimp to scarves.  Across a small bridge, in the town hall square, we found the Basilica of the Holy Blood, a two-level church dedicated to a relic of the Precious Blood of Christ, brought back from the Holy Land by a local knight after the Crusades.

Across the square, a hotel built in the 1990s stands atop ruins from a church from the 900s!  The lower-level conference rooms and banquet facilities have a unique setting, indeed.  In addition to the remains of the church walls, the display includes all manner of archaeological finds -- pottery, tools, coins, tombs, and more.

Back up on street level, we passed chocolate shop after chocolate shop, their windows displaying every variety, flavor, and shape of Belgium's favorite sweet. These "tools" are actually made of chocolate.

Along with shops selling French (really, Belgian) fries with mayonnaise, enormous varieties of Belgian beer (including chocolate!), lace, and "tapestry" purses, the retail scene is made for tourists.

We reached the Begijnhof shortly before noon.  Begijnhofs were originally established to furnish homes for single women and widows (of which there were many, because of military deaths).  The Beguines lived religious lives devoted to service, but without the vows of religious orders.  The Bruges Begijnhof consists of small white houses surrounding a large, quiet courtyard, a convent for Benedictine nuns, and a brick church.  We arrived in time for the nuns' chanting of noon prayers in the church, and stayed to witness the daily ritual. 

The Minnewater, or Water of Love, adjoins the Begijnhof, and we had a quiet walk around the pretty lake, framed by weeping willows and home to swans and ducks.

This afternoon, we devoted to art, another important part of Bruges' legacy.  We stopped first at the Church of our Lady, which is undergoing extensive interior renovation/restoration.  We were able to see Michelangelo's Madonna and Child, said to be his only sculpture to leave Italy during his lifetime and still one of his very few "expat" sculptures.  Then, we crossed the street to the Memling Museum, housed in a former church and hospital.  Along with much material devoted to medical history and religious art, several of Hans Memling's pieces, considered the apex of Flemish pre-Renaissance painting, were on display.

After a break for Belgian fries (with mayonnaise) and beer (We're trying to be part of the locavore movement, after all!), we headed for the Groeninge Museum, which focuses on Flemish art from the 15th to 20th centuries.

At that point, we were walked and art-ed out, so we had happy hour at home base before fulfilling today's last commitment to supporting local industries with dinner at a pub down the street -- just doing our part!

Thus fortified, we took an evening walk over to the town hall square and the Markt to see the floodlit bell tower (whose serenades can be heard all over town every 15 minutes) looming over the big and lively square.  A short canal-side stroll completed the circuit and brought us home for the night.

Amiens, Arras, and Bruges

Thursday, October 16, 2014

After checking out of our sweet apartment in Honfleur, we took the Pont de Normandie, the world's largest cable-stayed bridge, which crosses the Seine to the industrial port of Le Havre.  We didn't visit Le Havre, which has been totally rebuilt after World  War II, but instead headed to the northernmost part of France. During the Middle Ages, this area, along with parts of Belgium and The Netherlands, was known as Flanders, and many in the area still speak Flemish.

Today's first stop was at Amiens to see its magnificent cathedral of Notre Dame (of course!)  This is the largest Gothic church in France, twice the size of Notre Dame in Paris, and what a "WOW!" it is.  The facade is highly decorated with hundreds of statues, scenes, and filigree, all of which was originally in technicolor.  Now, during the summer months, an evening sound and light show recreates the former colorful exterior.  The nave is almost impossibly long and high; the vaulted ceiling simply soars. There is a tremendous amount of statuary, carved in both polychrome wood and stone, frescoes, war memorials, stained glass windows, a labyrinth in the center of the nave, and -- the head of John the Baptist!!  Even more amazing is the fact that, except for the spire, the cathedral was completed in just 85 years in the 13th century; talk about hard to beat!

Leaving Amiens, our drive took us through countryside dotted with many war cemeteries dedicated to thousands of French soldiers and their allies who lost their lives during the first world war's Battle of the Somme; these are Flanders Fields.  Here, as well as in Normandy and Brittany, every small town square has a monument honoring its war dead.  Again, the past is always present here.

We made a brief stop in Arras for a stroll around its two adjacent squares, the Grand'Place and the Petite Place.  They are each ringed by buildings topped with Dutch-style curved gables and fronted by arched and covered arcades, somewhat reminiscent of the porticoes of Bologna.

In short order, we crossed into Belgium and headed for beautiful Bruges, our headquarters for the next four nights.  We have another great apartment right in the old town of this "Venice of the North."  We took a stroll along some of the canals and into the large Market Square before heading back for dinner at "home."

In and around Honfleur

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

We've been based in Honfleur since Saturday, but have not spent much time exploring our own backyard, so this morning, we remedied that situation.  We walked over to the Vieux Bassin, the inner harbor, which we had visited the evening of our arrival.  This morning, the water in the small port was mirror calm, reflecting the tall, narrow buildings of the Quai Ste. Catherine.

We wandered in the small cobbled lanes off the Quai St. Etienne and, for a short while, left the 21st century behind.  Honfleur was spared bombing during World War II, and much of it remains as it has for centuries. It is still an important fishing port and, in times past, served as the departure point for exploration to the New World, most notably that of Samuel de Champlain, who is honored with plaques and a statue at the gate of the old city. Honfleur is a lovely, very atmospheric town, and many Impressionists, including Monet and local favorite Eugene Boudin, captured its beauty on canvas.

In the old town, we strolled the weekly outdoor market of organic (and beautiful) produce, bakery items, and spirits.  We are in apple country and, while wine is not produced here, cider (not for the kiddies!), Calvados (definitely not for the kiddies), and pommeau (a combination of the two) are prized regional specialties.

The market was set up outside the Church of St. Catherine, a wooden structure built by townspeople and fishermen, and very reflective of their maritime heritage.  The double-naved structure and all of its decorations are constructed of beautifully carved wood, and it's not hard to imagine flipping it on its roof and finding two wooden ships floating side by side.  Remarkably (to us, anyway), the belfry of the church is a separate structure just across the square!

We wandered a bit through the streets, lined with half-timbered houses, artists' studios, art galleries, and boutiques, enjoyed a bit of the Public Garden, and then stopped in the Church of St. Leonard, with its ornately decorated Gothic facade, before stopping back at our apartment to pick up our car for our excursions farther and/or higher afield.

We first drove to the Cote du Grace, a point above the town, which is home to Notre Dame de Grace, a beautiful chapel filled with maritime paintings, ex votos for sailors' lives saved, and wooden ship models suspended from the ceiling. The original structure was built in the 10th century and rebuilt by Richard II, and has been a chapel of pilgrimage for centuries.  St. Therese of Lisieux came with her family to this spot to pray that she might be able to enter the Carmelite order, though, just 14 years old, she'd previously been deemed too young.  (Spoiler alert: her prayers were answered in the affirmative.)  By the time we reached the viewpoint, the rain had, as well, so we were glad to have done our walking circuit of Honfleur earlier.

We headed down the coast to the resort cities of Trouville and Deauville, sitting side-by-side at the mouth of the Touques River.  The towns each have their own large casino and, though Trouville can claim seniority, Deauville, with its yacht clubs, horse farms, race tracks, film festival, and luxury hotels takes the prize for vacation playground of the rich and famous.  We walked along Les Planches, the boardwalk, lined with cabanas bearing the names of past and present film greats,  that runs the length of the long and wide sand beach in Deauville.  Out of season, and on a gray, drizzly day, it was quiet, except for a few conventioneers spotted wandering around during their lunch break.

We continued south along the coast from Deauville, driving through pretty towns to Cabourg, where we headed inland through the rich dairy and orchard farmland of the Pays d'Auge to the picture-perfect little town of Beuvron-en-Auge, whose quiet central square (OK, triangle) is lined with beautiful half-timbered houses, now converted to restaurants, antique shops, and boutiques -- of course!  The old covered market, Les Halles, now houses a series of small shops in the center of the square/triangle.  Disney-esque perfection!

Our last stop was in Lisieux, where we visited the home of St. Therese, the Little Flower.  She is Mary Ellen's (and probably half the other girls in the '60s) confirmation namesake.  This was an unplanned destination, and a nostalgically sweet one for MER.



Then it was back to Honfleur, for one last evening in our great digs in Normandy.  We've discovered so much variety and richness in both Brittany and Normandy, that we feel we could have spent much longer in each and not run out of things to do, see, and learn.  Nevertheless, tomorrow we head for beautiful Bruges, Belgium, a return visit to a favorite destination.