Canals of Bruges

In Bruges

I really need to devote several postings to Bruges, which was every bit as amazing as I had been led to believe that it would be. Anyone who has seen the film In Bruges will have some sense of what a magical place it is. It ended up being one of those little side trips that makes the entire trip wonderful (although I loved Brussels itself, and have more to say about my time spent there as well). To start off, it is ridiculously easy to get to from Brussels - a train runs from the Central Station every half-hour all day long, and it ended up only costing me around 14 euro for the round-trip, although I went on a Sunday and that made it a little cheaper. As is seemingly my wont, I ended up going there on the 4th of July, and I may now start planning annual trips to foreign sites for every 4th of July - they always turn out well, and it probably adds to my ex-pat resume. I'll add a lot more text when I post on the central squares, the cathedrals, the canals, and the belfry. At this point I just want to post some pictures to give some sense of my initial emotional responses to Bruges. I spent the entire day walking around, stopping only a couple times for snack breaks, and just fell in love with the place - and can't wait to go back. It was crowded (as you can tell from the first picture - I had to stand in the compartment between the cars, and I got an early start, although, to be fair, it was a Sunday) but not uncomfortably so, and very touristy but even that had a quirky feel (note the museums dedicated to chocolate and Belgian fries, respectively). Much more in a few days.

A Very Vermonty Weekend

Last weekend I had one of those weekends that was so ridiculously Vermonty that I should have just started running tours of traditional Burlington establishments. It started on Friday night when my friend Cinse and I went to the late showing of Inception at the Roxy, which is a great little cinema that specializes in foreign and independent films (and the occasional Hollywood blockbuster, although even those are fairly selective). Now, catching the late show meant that I had to "suffer" through one of the definite problems of living in Burlington - the lack of a first-rate public transportation system. All the buses had long since stopped running for the evening so I had to make the half-hour plus walk from downtown over to Winooski where I live. On Saturday morning I rode my bike back to downtown and met Cinse at Penny Cluse, a restaurant that I had sworn off for the better part of a decade until my friend Trish cajoled me into trying it again last summer. It was one of the first place that I ate in Burlington, and, fresh from the sunny south, I wasn't ready for Vermont food yet. I ordered biscuits and gravy, and the gravy was herb gravy, which led me to tell the waiter "I think you're trying too hard - you can make this with pork products and it is delicious." So, I went on a nine year food strike before trying it again, and, I have to admit, it was very good - so I was happy to meet Cinse for breakfast there last week. After that we walked over to the farmers market that always runs on Saturday morning, and I'll include several pictures, most of which relate to Cinse searching for pennies to buy ever more products. Then I jumped back on my bike and went for a twenty mile ride up on the bike path to Colchester (I was getting prepped for the really big ride this weekend up to the Champlain Islands - more on that later). I'm including a picture of the area on the Colchester bike path where I had my spectacular crash last year and wrapped my face around the metal railing, leaving me with broken teeth and a face full of stitches. When I finally made it back I cleaned up and then walked up the hill to meet my friend Mike at a Vermont Lake Monsters baseball game (more on that later). On Sunday I went for another long bike ride, and then met Cinse downtown for vegan cupcakes and iced mochas, first at Uncommon Ground and then at Muddy Waters. There, for a person who is not very Vermonty, that was a remarkably Vermonty weekend. Oh, and I included a picture of the famous Samosa Man, not only because he has great samosas but also because my son worked for him one summer.

52 New Things

I know there's a link to it on my sidebar, but I wanted to take a moment to call special attention to my wonderful friend Trish Siplon's blog - 52 New Things. Trish teaches at St. Mike's College here in Burlington and is a great teacher (a past recipient of the Vermont Professor of the Year award), scholar (she just returned from giving a keynote address at an AIDS conference in Uganda) and friend. She has this amazing blog based on her goal for 2010 - doing something new every week for an entire year. This ranges from travelling to Nepal to finally going to famous local bar Nectar's - but whatever it is, it is always entertaining and thought-provoking. So definitely check out her blog: trish52newthings.blogspot.com

Bumming in Brussels

I arrived in Brussels around 7:00 in the morning on 3 July, and, after jumping on the super clean and efficient metro system, left me downtown at my hotel still pretty early in the morning. I have several rules for travelling, one of which relates to arriving someplace in the morning or mid-day - never, ever, no matter how tired you are, go to bed - just grind it through until a normal bedtime and try and get on schedule. This trip was no exception. After dropping my stuff off at the hotel I just went out for an all-day walk around Brussels. Mainly I was just bumming. I was planning on catching a train to Bruges the next day, and maybe another one to another town on the next day, but on this day I was just wanted to take it easy, get a sense of the layout of the city, and just see what I ran into. So here are a bunch of generally silly pictures of my first day - I've posted the pictures of the Grand Place earlier. Here's a picture of the famous statue of the peeing boy, although decked out in suitable attire for the World Cup. I stopped at a little sweet shop on a side street and had their daily special (which I suspect is exactly the same every day) - ice cream, a warm waffle, and chocolate syrup for 3 euro. Of course, I also had to stop and have some frites, Belgian fries, complete with mayo - in this case with sausage thrown in. I think the fries character looks like he actually belongs in Amsterdam.

Grand Place

As I mentioned, the Hotel Arlequin Grand Place, where I stayed in Brussels, was only around a block and a half away from the Grant Place itself. You turned left out of the hotel and followed the cobblestone street until you arrivede at the main square, which is the center of the old part of Brussels. I could give a name to every one of the buildings, but I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. The architecture is quite stunning. The Grand Place is a huge square, probably a couple hundreds yards across, which is lined with museums and restaurants and stores. It is busy all day long, and is a particularly lovely place to sit at the end of the day. The top picture is of the Galleries Royales St. Hubert, which has been turned into a very high end shopping mall. The rest of the pictures are various shots of the Grand Place. Highly recommended. My friend Kate asked me to take a lot of pictures of the architecture - between this posting and the ones to come on Bruges, she'll get her wish.

Hotel Arlequin Grand Place

I still have things I want to post about the recent trip to India, but I think I'm going to go ahead and get busy posting material from the three day jaunt through Belgium. While I knew I would enjoy my time in Belgium, I was really unprepared for how much I liked my time there. First off, the hotel. I arrived in Brussels around 7:00 a.m. on 3 July after my nine hour flight from Mumbai. Luckily, I decided to stay at the Hotel Arlequin Grand Place, which I had found on the net and which was also talked up in my Lonely Planet guide. I found a great deal at hotels.com for around $90 a night, which is, obviously, a pretty sweet deal for Europe. It was a little tricky to find initially, although everybody I met was remarkably friendly and spoke perfect English so I tracked it down pretty easily. You head out of the Centrale Gare, the central metro station (which is only two stops away from the airport), and just walk downhill for about three blocks. It ended up being about a block and a half from the Grand Place (more on that later). The guy at the front desk, who seemed to work there around the clock, was great - very friendly and full of wonderful suggestions. I was in room 702, which is on the top floor and had splendid view of downtown - and was about twenty feet away from the morning buffet (which was also very good - and had an even better view of downtown). Really, I could not have been happier with it.

Constructing the Metro

In both Delhi and Mumbai there was a lot of construction on the creation of a metro system. If you've ever driven through either of these cities you know how desperately India needs a metro system. On our first time through Mumbai on this visit it took John, Volga and Shukla three and a half hours to get from downtown to their place. Here's a picture of the elevated line in Delhi. Mr. Rakesh also told me that this particular area had already collapsed twice during construction - although I haven't checked on that yet - so there are a lot of challenges in putting this all together. There is also the feeling among the Indians that they have to take measures like this to help alleviate the poor air quality.

A Quiet Afternoon

And just so that you don't think that my entire trip to India was either a hot sweaty trek across the subcontinent or a series of reflective meditations at various religious temples, here's a shot of a very nice afternoon I spent in the Ramada Hotel in Delhi. It was after my morning of sight-seeing with Mr. Rakesh. We weren't leaving for a few hours so I plopped down in a nice, comfy chair in the air-conditioned lobgy and spent the afternoon reading the paper, drinking a cafe latte, and eating a truly decadent chocolate dessert. I was not overly impressed with the Ramada itself - the hotel itself is very nice, with a great pool and workout facility - but things at the front desk were utterly chaotic and confused from the moment we checked in until the time we left. Normally I have a high tolerance for chaos, but it you're paying a lot for a hotel then you shouldn't have to deal with it. That said, it was a lovely place to spend the afternoon. It was also interesting that many of the Indians pronounced Ramada as Rama-da, as compared to Ra-mada - and, considering the importance of the hero Rama from the Ramayana this makes perfect sense.

Lotus Temple

As part of my day of sight-seeing in Delhi I was able to revisit the beautiful Lotus Temple, the extraordinary Baha'i temple. I had visited it years before on my first trip to India as part of a Champlain College team. What was nice about this trip was that I had much greater control over my schedule so I could stay there a lot longer, spend more time in the temple itself thinking/meditating, and also visit the museum dedicated to the history and philosophy of the Baha'i faith (if you look at the third picture you can see the museum in the distance). It was pretty brutally hot, and there is no air-conditioning inside the temple, but it was still a very nice, peaceful experience. You do have to take off your shoes at a distance from the temple, so get ready for a hot walk (again, in the third picture you can see the area where you leave your shoes). The museum is underground and air-conditioned, and a very pleasant way to end the visit. The entire visit is free, but even if it were not it would still be a definite thing to do when seeing Delhi.