Friday 10.1.2010


Skipping to Paree


We must be leaving Brussels today because we wake up to a beautiful sunny sky. It will be a great day in our absence. We get down to breakfast early by our standards (8:00) but late by everyone else’s. This is definitely a lower-end business class hotel with most of the real people out early getting to work. The usual for breakfast this morning and we expect we will see less meat and cheese for breakfast in France so we make the most of it.

Mary has a bit of shopping to do so John gets some time on the computer while she returns to the Grand Place for chocolate immersion. There is a flower market in the square, reminiscent of pictures we have seen with the entire square bathed in flowering colors. Very impressive even at this level.

We check out at 11:00 and start walking to the south terminal where we will catch the high-speed train to Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport. It is a more pleasant walk back to the station this morning with the sun shining, the streets cleaned up from the earlier protests and tons of locals well into their day’s tasks. The smells are fantastic with chickens rotating on spits, breads baking in the Moroccan bakeries and lots of exotic spices mingling in the pre-noon air. Our slightly nervous 20-minute walk on Wednesday has turned into a delightful 15-minute amble this morning. With apologies to Mack Davis, our best view of Brussels might be in the rear-view mirror.


We are again more than an hour early for our train so John has coffee while Mary browses. She finds all the places where we will eventually need to go so it is time well spent. The train is about half full and we can move from backward-facing seats to a four-seat configuration around tables where we can get some more work done. We stop in Lille, France where more passengers fill up our car so we’re back to our original seats, but because the train has changed directions we are now facing forward. We’re surprised so many people are on the train to the Paris airport, but it is an important hub.


We see the planes before we see the station and eventually slow to a rolling stop where the doors pop open. No one moves. What’s going on? A couple more people get on and if anyone is getting off we have missed it. We have now moved up by the door and Mary asks a young woman if this is Charles de Gaulle and she says “oui.” Mary then asks if this is where we get off, and the woman said, “you had better.” We jump off just in the nick of time before the doors close and the train continues it’s journey to Marseilles in the south of France. Guess they weren’t all going to the airport.


Sister Pat is joining us for the next two weeks and she has been patiently waiting for us for the last couple hours. Again, wasting no time she has scouted all the details of catching the shuttle to our hotel in the little village of Roissy. Roissy is to the Paris airport what Bloomington is to MSP, but it remains a quirky small walkable village with a row of big hotels on one end. We are staying at the Mercure where the Priceline Princess has extended her reach into the international marketplace. We each have a spectacular king-bed room with an American style bathroom and all the comforts of home including free Wi-Fi. The price for all this comfort you ask? Fifty bucks per room per night. The absolute steal of our entire trip—so far.

We go for a walk around the village just as (say it all together) it starts to rain. We duck into the Village Brasserie for a couple pression bierres (tap beers) and make reservations for dinner this evening. It reenergizes us to feed a bit off Pat’s excitement for her vacation. After our 5:00 PM nap we’re back at the Brasserie where Pat has a nice looking steak with a potato “muffin,” Mary a nicely presented seafood salad and John has the crayfish ravioli in a bisque style sauce. All nicely done for less than 20-euros per plate.


A drizzly walk back to the hotel where Pat crashes while John and Mary catch the big debut night of “Strictly Come Dancing” on the BBC. It is a 6:00 AM wake-up tomorrow so we better get to bed.


Today's weather: Sunny and warm in Brussels; Cool with clouds and rain in Paris. Low 48, high 62.

Thursday 9.30.2010


Rainy Brussels


Well, here we go again. We wake to a constant drizzle this morning that looks like it will last all day. Our breakfast is served in a first floor dining room and is the usual Euro fare of meats, cheeses, hard-boiled eggs and breads with coffee and juice. We have become good breakfast eaters and lunch skippers on this trip.


We bite the bullet and finally go out in the rain at about 10:30. Our walk takes us again to the Grand Place and sideways to the Bourse, the Wall Street of Europe. Like Wall Street, the Bourse is surrounded by crash barriers and security measures. Just south of the Grand Place is the Manekin Pis which is a statue of a little boy peeing into a bigger fountain. Strangely enough this used to be one of the main sources of water for the city in its early years.

Right next door to the little pisser is the best looking waffle shop we have seen so far. Can’t go to Belgium without getting a waffle. John opts for one topped with whipped cream, fresh strawberries and chocolate, all of which wind up all over his face and clothes, but it’s good. Mary watches from a safe distance.


Brussels is divided into Lower Town and Upper Town. We have been in Lower Town until now but start up the hill to see what’s up. There is a palace on every other corner with parks interspersed and on a sunny day might be very impressive. Today, it is hard to focus on sight seeing as we dodge umbrellas and drenched joggers. As we pass the Belgian national buildings and approach the EU buildings there is a decided increase in large black sedans and massive office buildings.


There is a 3:00 tour of the European Union Parliament, which we show up for at 2:30 just to be out of the rain. The tour is by headphones in the 23 languages of the 27 countries represented here. They give you an Ipod and you just punch in your flag and you’re off and running. There is a group a few minutes ahead of us that has to be some sort of former-Communist trade delegation, all suited and serious with not very stylish looks. Bulgarian we decide. We have to do something to entertain ourselves.


The tour is brief with a look at a 2-story welcoming sculpture and then we take a seat in the Parliament visitor’s area to listen to our Ipods. It seems to us that the 500 duly elected members of the EU Parliament are there to give speeches and make each other feel good about themselves. The individual countries seem to do as they please regardless of EU guidelines. We have a great deal of trouble getting our states to think alike and we’ve been trying for a couple hundred years. Interesting nonetheless and this is the reason we came to Brussels.


The good news is that the sun has peeked out while we were on our tour so our spirits brighten with the sky. We don’t feel like repeating our four-hour walk that we took to get here so we plot a new route back to our hotel. This takes us through about 6 different cultures from North African to East African to Arabic to Southeast Asian to wealthy European, literally within blocks of each other. We’re not sure why Brussels has become such a melting pot of nationalities. Perhaps it is because of its position in the EU that it feels necessary to be welcoming or perhaps it has always been like this. Chicken or egg? We’ll have to look it up.


Our new route leads us to an outdoor elevator that drops us back down from Upper to Lower Town and we’re back to the hotel before 5:00. Our four-hour walk from this morning is less than an hour returning.


After a little nap we check with the guy at the front desk about restaurants in the neighborhood. He points us across the street to a little two-story bistro (Houtsi Plou) that serves traditional Belgian food along with steaks, pastas and monster burgers. There is a big table next to us that has all of the “English” menus so we get a big beer (John), a small carafe of red wine (Mary) and a French menu. We’re able to make out everything except the “Pain de Veau.” When our waiter returns we find out that the Pain de Veau is a Belgian meat loaf with mushroom-cream gravy and Stoemp (mashed potatoes with carrots). We’ll take two of those and an order of cheese croquettes. Fantastic. Maybe this is why we came to Brussels. A nice walk around the neighborhood and off to bed.


A bit of bad news. Brother Joe let us know that Dana’s Mom passed away after a long struggle. She was a great golfer and a fun, smart lady. She will have a Memorial service on the 16th so we will toast her memory.


Today’s weather: Clouds and rain, clearing late. Low 48, high 58

Wednesday 9.29.2010


En-Route


What a lovely morning. The story of our trip so far is that when it is time for us to leave, the sun reappears and that’s the case this morning. Today Peter is whipping up individual vegetable Quiches along with a very tasty bread pudding, a nice savory-sweet mixture. We’re joined at breakfast by a nice young Israeli couple on their honeymoon as well as the young couple from Manchester who we met yesterday. There is a lively discussion about global economic affairs and Peter is convinced there will be two Euros in the future, the haves and the have-nots. We expect that opinion is not shared by the have-nots, but it is hard to disagree with Peter. Not necessarily because he is right, but just because it is hard to disagree with Peter. We think his partner Tom may agree.


We take advantage of our last morning in Amsterdam with a nice walk around our lovely leafy Jordaan neighborhood. Actually we walk one block to our left and find some lovely blossoms blooming in their windows with the red light on above, so perhaps we’re between neighborhoods. There is much said about the sleazy drug trade in Amsterdam, but there is also a very proper, almost pharmaceutical, element as well. There are “Smart Shops” where drugs are professionally displayed in clean windows with brief descriptions such as, “a mild high with an elevated sense of joy and much laughter; 10 grams for four hours; 11.50 Euros.” Or perhaps, “a medium high with an enhanced sense of color and sounds; 10 grams for four hours, 12.00 Euros.” It sounds as easy as having a few beers and less expensive.


We meet Peter back at the B&B at noon and settle our bill amidst more animated conversation. Peter is the ultimate entertainer who enjoys being on stage and we thoroughly enjoy the fun. We would gladly stay here again.


We walk about ten minutes to the train station where we are catching the 1:16 Thalys to Brussels. We are a bit new at the train business so we are 45 minutes early whereas most of the folks show up with a minute or two to spare. It is good people watching and we are outside so it’s ok.


We have reserved seats in car #15 and there is room on the overhead rack for all of our luggage. The trip takes a bit over two hours with stops in Rotterdam and Antwerp. This is definitely easier than plane travel for this length of trip and we get to see a bit of countryside. There are a few old-style windmills still around and what seems like thousands of greenhouses supplying Amsterdam’s huge international flower markets.


Brussels is not pretty when we arrive. We now have a hazy overcast that greets us with one shade of gray. There were 100,000 “strikers" marching here today to protest against the economic policies of the EU and our train station is right where the march ended. There is trash everywhere including a few of the leftover marchers. We have a map to walk to our hotel from the central station and we check with a cop to get us on the right street. He points to an area about three inches off our map and says you are here at the south station, not the central. Crap.

We decide to walk it anyway and find ourselves hauling our luggage through all the trash from the marchers and into a middle-eastern neighborhood where old Minnesota tourists rarely appear. While we feel like curiosities, we never feel threatened and will walk back this way when we leave.


We really have no good reason to be in Brussels except that it is between Amsterdam and Paris. We do think that with the headquarters of the EU here, we will be seeing news from Brussels for many years to come so wanted to at least gain some sense of the city. Our hotel is a highly rated “bargain” hotel which is in a mixed neighborhood south of the main part of the city. It is definitely not the Ritz but the rooms are clean, we have Wi-Fi and the bathroom is nice.

We venture out to the Grand Place (Grahn Plahss), a massive square with magnificent ornate buildings surrounded by sidewalk cafes. We both think it reminds us of Piazza San Marco in Venice but with better buildings. It’s 5:00 somewhere (here actually) which leads us to an outside table for a couple of those wonderful Belgian beers. The couple at the table next to us is from Smithtown, New York on Long Island (Jamie and Paul) so we chat a bit about our mutual travels. They were in Paris for a few days and they aren’t sure why they are in Brussels either. They did give us a few local tips for food and explorations. We give them tips on retirement.

We have to have Mussels in Brussels so hit restaurant row right off the square. This is like Little Italy in New York where there are "hosts" out on the sidewalks waving (dragging) you into their cafes. Restaurant Leon has been recommended for the mussels so we each have the special which is a bucket of mussels steamed in a white wine broth with celery and herbs, a side of fries and a beer for E12.90. A steal. Even Mary does a nice job on her mussels.

There are heaters on the sidewalk where we are eating and a bit of blue sky has emerged just before the sun went down so maybe this isn't such a bad place to be. It is a nice easy walk back to our hotel and just before we get to our door a fellow pops out of an alley holding a rag over his nose and mouth that smells to us a lot like an acetone product. Then again, maybe this isn't such a good place to be. School is still out.

Today's weather: Sunny and warm in Amsterdam; Cool and cloudy in Brussels. Low, 55, High 67