Bruges

Birthday boy

I started the day trying to be nice by making Hisham a delicious birthday breakfast but when I turned the kettle and the oven on at the same time I was met with silence: the fridge stopped whirring, the jug stopped boiling and the lights all turned off. Apparently that's a thing in Europe and you shouldn't have two kitchen appliances on at the same time. Who knew? Thankfully the gas and internet were still working so I carried on making breakfast on the stove top while emailing our host to figure out where the fuse box was. Hisham and his brother-in-law searched high and low but it was nowhere to be found and I had tried in vain to call the three contact numbers we had been left but of course none of those worked either and so we waited. And waited. And waited. Finally just as we were about to leave the house for the day I refreshed my emails one final time and, at last, a reply! She informed us that there was a basement we needed to explore and a box to find and so we went on a bit of an adventure. 

down the stairs... 

.. and in to the deep dark depths of the building

When we first went down the stairs we only had the light from our cellphones and it was like something straight out of a very scary movie. There were dark openings everywhere and no way to tell if they were filled with fugitives or skeletons or wild animals or any number of equally terrifying things but I put my brave boots on and ventured into the unknown. You'll all be pleased to know that I found nothing except empty spaces and fuse boxes, and that the strange noises I didn't tell you about so as not to overwhelm you with Scary were just water running through the pipes. We quickly located the right box and flicked the obvious switch and voila: all was well with the world. It was time to head off on our next adventure for the day.

These two are definitely Google photos.

Bruges! The place I've been Pinteresting and dreaming of and Googling about for weeks and finally, finally we were on our way. Bruges has beautiful buildings and spectacular waterways, much like Venice, and of course is the focal point of the movie In Bruges. The journey there took double the estimated hour because I kept disbelieving the GPS (a lesson I never did quite learn fully), but finally we arrived and once again we were directed into the middle of town. This time there wasn't parking available anywhere so we cruised around the canals and the maze of one-way back streets for about an hour before eventually finding a parking spot right around the corner from the city square. 

Some of the streets were almost as narrow as this. Hisham and I could have easily
reached out and touched the buildings on either side of the car as we drove past.

It was that point that we realised we had forgotten both the pushchair and Adam and my warm clothes. Major fail. Luckily Bruges is small so Adam was able to walk anywhere we needed, and we shuffled clothes around so everybody was somewhat warm. Here's Adam in his getup of the day:

He's decided this is how he wants to pose when he says cheese now

We wandered around the tiny town square and checked out the Christmas markets and the surrounding streets. 

Adam was enthralled by the horses

and I loved the gorgeous buildings

And then it was time to conquer the infamous Bruges Belfry

all 366 steps of it

It was 3:55 when I managed to convince the guys to climb with me and I knew the bells chimed on the hour so we began a mad dash up the steps - every man for himself - only to be sorely disappointed five minutes later to hear the chime from the middle of the stairwell. I trudged up the remaining steps to the balcony of the bells and caught my breath while checking them out in all their impressive display. 

These were the spacious stairs about half way up.

The entire journey to the top is on dizzying swirling stairwells which snake up level after level while getting steadily narrower so as to increase your claustrophobia level. And then you emerge like a jack-in-the-box at the top and are met with a spectacular vista which makes the whole trip worthwhile. Note to those who may attempt such a climb: the entry fee is pretty steep (get it? get it?) at 8€, and the last entry is at something like 4:30pm. So go in winter like we did (totally planned, I promise) to miss the crowds and see a spectacular sunset. 

Bruges from the belfry at sunset

Soon after finally catching my breath (the others had arrived far ahead of me), we were all beautifully serenaded by the bells - apparently they go every quarter hour.. so much for our rush fifteen minutes earlier. We hung out enjoying the view for a while and then headed down in time to see the bells go at 4:30 which is also definitely worth the effort.

Town square with christmas market and ice skating rink

After warming up with waffles we headed home on the long straight across the country to Brussels and our lovely warm apartment. I spent the evening packing yet again (pack light, people! Pack light!) and we all mentally prepared ourselves for the epic road trip we would be embarking upon in the morning. 

Yes Adam is wearing my cardy. It was part of our clothes-sharing experiment.

Brussels

With only two days in Belgium we decided to spend one in Brussels and one in Bruges and were not disappointed with what either city had to offer.

To start our day we headed out to the Atomium - a structure which was constructed for the Brussels World Fair in 1958 and was supposed to be dismantled afterwards except that the city of Brussels requested for it to remain as an icon of the city.

The Atomium in all its glory

We had considered paying ludicrous amounts of money to get into Little Europe
but were quite satisfied with the view of it we got from the Atomium

Me and the Atomium posing

Brussels

The grounds outside the Atomium were a spectacular demonstration of autumn perfectly displayed in one scene:

Breathtakingly beautiful

Artsy win, I think

On our way in to Brussels we passed a marketplace and all decided we'd like to take a wander around it. This ended up being an excellent decision as the suburb we stopped in apparently looked exactly like Syria as it was before the war. It was a nostalgic visit for Hisham and his family who thoroughly enjoyed exploring the shops, ordering food just as they would have at home, and generally reliving the glory days of their homeland.

We also found a place selling delicious Middle Eastern sweets

When we finally headed into the city centre our handy GPS delivered us straight to the square in the middle of town and we were the only car around. Thankfully there was a public car park just across the square to hide our bulky vehicle and spit us out to join the throngs of other tourists touristing.

First things first: Chocolate!

This shop was as wondrous as it looks from the outside

A few of the fancier shops also had free samples (swoon!)

As we were wandering the sweets trying to find the iconic Mannekin Pis statue, we came across one of the Tintin murals which are scattered around the city:

Zoom in if you can for a closer look: it's quite cool.

Found it! Adam delighted in telling the little boy that 'Wees go in the toilet!'

Apparently he is dressed in costumes several times each week but as you can see he was quite naked the day we visited. While Adam and I lectured the little boy, Hisham bravely waited out the queue for some spectacular Belgian waffles, and then we began the journey back to the car and home.

.. but were sidetracked by the Grand Place - another square in the middle of town - which has a light show during the Christmas season. We were planning to come back into town after dinner to see it but by this time it was already evening so we waited around for a few minutes until the next show began. They are fifteen minutes long on the hour and all of the buildings surrounding the square light up. The lights change in time and according to the mood of the music playing. An incredible spectacle not to be missed!

We all very much enjoyed the fact that our apartment was only a ten minute drive from town and spent the time saved on travelling by relaxing and catching up with family overseas on Skype.

Paris to Belgium

Next stop: Brussels(!). We made the now-familiar trip into town to pick up our rental car early on in the day and then braved the drive through Paris rush hour back to pack all our gear up. Lesson: if it says the car fits seven people, it means just seven people. Disregard what they say about it fitting three bags because that is false false false. It was a rather cosy trip with all of our bags plus pushchair plus Hisham’s family’s luggage but other than that the car we got was excellent. It had an inbuilt GPS, cruise control, automatic windscreen wipers and a fully adjustable driver’s seat. I at least was comfortable!

Pros at using the escalators with a pushchair

Waiting forever for the gates to open. People regularly tried to sneak through with us.

Paris morning rush hour. Luckily we didn't need to go through them!

Adam was a big fan of the toy cars in the Sixt office

The Beast

Before we figured out how to turn the navigation system to English

A note on renting vehicles in Europe: having done so a grand total of two times now, I feel qualified to dispense some wisdom regarding navigation systems. We knew we absolutely needed a GPS so we made a point of indicating our preference for it this time in our online booking. There was an option to pay something like €12 per day to guarantee that you would have one but that would have cost us about $100 so we decided to wing it and hope the booking agents were nice when we turned up. When we arrived at the Sixt office there was a guy organising our car and a lady manning the other desk who didn't look like she was happy with the world that day. She had a name tag with a name I had never seen before so I asked her about the pronunciation and meaning of it. I've forgotten what it was now but I remember the pronunciation was beautiful and her name meant freedom, but that's beside the point. The point is that she brightened up after this conversation and we also discovered she spoke Arabic. As I was answering questions for the guy, Hisham chatted to her a bit. He sneakily asked her about the GPS in Arabic and she told him not to mention it - that it would be part of the car. So we didn't, and lo and behold it was indeed part of the car of awesome when we arrived. Moral of the long-winded-story: most rental cars now are new and have inbuilt GPS. Don't waste money requesting one or get scammed into it by the booking agents.

As we were leaving Paris we came across an exhilarating sight which looked something like this:

but if you can imagine a plane twice this size ahead of us then you have more of an idea of what it was like. A very very cool experience to add a little excitement to our trip.

About two hours into the trip we were nearing the outskirts of Brussels when all of a sudden I noticed the rain had stopped falling like it usually does and it had started kind of floating. You could say it was drifting down in a relaxed, gentle, snowy sort of a way. It didn’t last for more than a minute or so and it wasn’t staying on the ground and we didn’t stop the car but it was magical none-the-less. Snow! This is what a winter trip to Europe is all about I reckon. I was driving so you have been spared any blurry boring photos I would have otherwise taken – lucky you. I’m hopeful that we’ll see more snow soon though so be prepared.

The Airbnb apartment we booked in Brussels was furnished in a very eclectic way with record players and Japanese art scattered about. The pots and plates were deliberately mismatched and there was no microwave or even a toaster. It was certainly a different style of living to what we had experienced in Paris and not really one I like so much but it was warm and spacious and it had six beds so we were happy. It also had a cat, which Adam and I both really enjoyed. I didn’t realise how much I’ve missed having cats around. We had planned to go out and explore the town in the evening but it was so cold and dark that instead we celebrated our arrival with Tim Tam Slams and then headed to an early bed.

Paris – Louvre and Love Locks

This was how our morning started:

The little tin roof you can see across the other side of the park is where the drummers were the other day. Magnificient!

Mmm French breakfast

It only got better from there. We headed out to the Louvre and you’ll be pleased to hear we dressed for the weather today! .. although we had to take all of our warm clothes off as soon as we got inside the museum of course so it wasn’t a complete win.

Adam and baba train pic

I had read up about the Louvre a bit before we went and discovered that it was free in winter on the first Sunday of each month. Guess what today was? This particular website also strongly suggested not to go on the free days because of the insane queues outside and crowds inside, but I think we have already firmly established that we are tourists first and foremost on this trip so queues and crowds are our natural habitat. There reason I loved that website so much, however, was that the writer had explained that there is a separate entrance for the disabled – including children in pushchairs. When we arrived to the museum it was already mid afternoon but still there was a slowly-moving line stretching all the way around the square. We decided it would be worth a try to see if we could enter a little faster and the only possible place to do this was right at the front door so we made a beeline for it. We were mostly testing the waters, incredulous that a pushchair could be the magic key to skipping the queue, but the guy boredly waved us all through a side gate and then we were in just like that!

We had already decided number one was to see the Mona Lisa but it took about half an hour to find her because of my confusion with the map. I thought the open spaces were walls and the walls were passages which made the going very difficult and meant we encountered multiple dead-end lifts and unexpected flights of stairs (pushchair fail) before finally finding ourselves in the right section. We traipsed passed the statues, merely glanced at the 14^th Century Italian art and sinfully ignored the frescoes until eventually turning one final corner and then beholding Mona herself in all her glory.

Fellow tourist’s phones and all.

I heard that the woman in the painting apparently was so unhappy with the depiction that she refused to pay Leonardo da Vinci for his work and I must say I don’t really see what all the fuss is about either. I don’t think that the artwork is particularly beautiful or that it should be worth gazillions of dollars but I’m no fancy art person so what do I know.

Look there’s the lady!

Fun fact: Did you know the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre once and wasn’t discovered missing for more than 24 hours? Everyone thought it had been moved for cleaning. It was missing for more than two years until finally an Italian guy tried to sell it to an art dealer. He claimed to have nicked the artwork on a whim when he saw it unattended and intended to return it to Italy, where he believed it belonged.

Hisham’s moment in the spotlight

The Louvre is massive. Like huge huge. Like you could easily spend a week in there and still be seeing and learning new things. I could anyway. We consulted the map which I had by now figured out and decided to head to the Islamic Art exhibit next. I love museums and history and any kind of informational displays and I take great delight in reading every single word on the signs that accompany each exhibit. The Louvre is in France, obviously, but what hadn’t been obvious to me was that the signs were also in French. Duh. So I couldn’t read them!* This meant I didn’t enjoy this exhibition so much because it was mostly just looking at stuff I had no clue about, but we all had a bit of fun trying to read the old Arabic signs and carvings and exploring their history a little.

 * Right at the end of our time there when everybody else was ready to move on, I discovered that there was a summary of each case of exhibits in English. Oh how great my longing was to stay in that room for hours after this revelation!

This was a piece from when they started using marble in their artwork. I wouldn’t mind having one of these incredibly intricate pieces sitting around to fill with trinkets.

And imagine having this to use as a feather duster! I wonder if it was intended for actual use or just as decoration. Either way that’d be pretty awesome too. I hope but highly doubt that the peacock died of natural causes.

Adam discovered some cool seats to play under

After the Arab History exhibition the others were tired and wanting a rest but I was filled with renewed excitement, having just discovered the English signs, so they agreed to wait an hour while I explored a little more of the museum. I decided to go back to where we had begun and properly explore the statues and frescoes and Italian art.

I started at the Borghese Gladiator,

worked my way along the sarcophagi, ascended the steps to the glory of the Winged Victory of Samothrace,

and then immersed myself in the frescoes for a while. There are so many beautiful artworks that inspire the heart to prayer but I usually find the simplest to be the most engaging, like this one.

I should definitely have taken more note of who the artists were and what these were called.

I really enjoyed being able to take my time and read whatever I wanted about the things I saw and am slowly learning that I would much rather see a few things properly than rush through everything and remember nothing.

Next it was on to the Italian art throughout history. A lot of it was theological in nature and they had everything from the beheading of John the Baptist to Mary feeding the (not so) baby Jesus.

I don’t think I would ever think to draw something so gruesome as a beheading but there were actually quite a few pictures like this on display. Definitely not my cup of tea.

Surprisingly though I quite liked this one. It’s of the four seasons and I was struck how unusual it is. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it before.

And then it was time to head out on our merry way. 

We were keen to try and find at least one lock bridge and I had read that there was one near the Louvre so we headed out to the river and wandered around a bit. Not long afterwards, we finally found one! This had been one of our missions the whole time we were in Paris and we were due to leave the next morning so we were quite elated to be there at last.

After waiting ten long cold minutes for some French girls to pose for a hundred photos we too posed, posed and posed some more. Oh and we put a lock on and threw a (tiny) key into the river as well. It was pretty cool actually. We made mental notes of where our lock is but I don’t think we’ll ever find it again because there are just so many locks there all jumbled together and layering over each other.

Paris: complete. Well, almost. We still had to navigate through the city in our hire car the next morning..