Ghent Pictures

Bruges Pictures

Looking for Medieval and Renaissance History

June 11, 2013

The Silver Cloud brought us to Oostende, Belgium early Tuesday morning.  Oostende is another beach resort community on the North Sea.  Unlike Honfleur, Oostende was mostly destroyed during both world wars.  There still is a beautiful, lovingly restored renaissance cathedral that was easily visible from our docked ship.  Otherwise, most of the undistinguished architecture dates from the nineteen fifties on.  Oostende has a lovely beach and, for reasons unclear, a Ferris wheel as does every port we have visited lately.  The port served us mainly as another point from which to reach more famous sites in Belgium.

Michael and I made our way to the railway station and purchased tickets for Bruges and Ghent.    Michael visited Bruges nearly fifteen years ago but had never been to Ghent.  Both historic cities were new to me.  We arrived at Bruges after a comfortable 20-minute ride on an express train.  We attempted to follow the walking tour I had copied from an old Fodor's Guide to the Benelux Countries.  Somehow, I got us turned around in the main square. Michael and I walked on a side street that went to the opera house instead of the fish market.  We had a good laugh when a young woman asked us where we all were.  When we figured out our location, we completed the walking tour in a few hours of leisurely walking. The map was actually very good.

Michael was disappointed at the changes in Bruges.  I was also somewhat disappointed to see that the historic old hanseatic houses all seemed to have had plate glass windows installed on their ground floors.  Every building seemed a tourist shop of one kind or another.  Lace, chocolate, fashion of all kinds and small souvenirs (probably made in China) were for sale everywhere.  The old town hall has been turned into a museum, as have most of the other large buildings on or near the main square. 

Michael and I generally start out early to avoid crowds.  We didn't succeed this day because the ship was not cleared by the authorities for passengers to leave until after 9:00 am.  By 10:00 am, Bruges had tour groups everywhere we walked. Still, the day was pleasantly warm and sunny and we enjoyed ourselves immensely.

Next, on to Ghent.  A somewhat longer rail journey brought us to the southern outskirts of the city.  We opted to walk the mile plus to the city center.  The scenery was not as beautiful as Bruges but we could see that Ghent is a real city engaged in real commerce.  Bruges, in contrast, was more of a Disneyland devoted almost exclusively to tourism. Ghent's Kornmarkt, the three tall bell towers and the town hall were impressive.  The rows of hanseatic houses and guildhalls were more authentic than in Bruges.  There was, however, a strange structure on a plaza at the side of the town hall. It looked like a modernistic interpretation of a gabled shed on concrete pillars.  I suspect that concerts and festivals are held here, possible even a market.

We lunched in a restaurant below this plaza.  There was underground parking there too, out of sight so not to mar the ancient architecture of the center city.  Michael and I compared true Belgian brewed Stella Artois to the kind we enjoy in Boulder, Colorado.  The Stella in Belgium is not so sour and fresher tasting. We also ate beautifully smoked salmon.

We toured St. Michael's Church, a beautiful, ornate, renaissance church filled with artwork and sculpture, and walked by the other major attractions.  I, of course, took many photos. A tram to the railway station, a fast trip back to Oostende, a walk to the ship and we were back in time for afternoon tea.

Bruges and Ghent were different than I had expected.  I think I had subconsciously expected them to be frozen in time.  The sixteenth to eighteenth century buildings were still there.  The cities had not been bombed in WW II so the ancient architecture survived.  However, they had adapted in different ways to late 20^th century life.  Bruges had become a well cared for theme park and Ghent preserved the old buildings but built a newer city around them.  One of the most rewarding things about traveling is to have illusions dispelled.  The observed sights are really far more interesting than are those imagined.

Honfleur, France

Southampton and Cowes, Great Britain

First Leg of the Journey: Getting Started and Honfleur

June 10, 2013, Honfleur, France

Michael and I are now in Honfleur France.  I had expected to start this narrative sooner but I had less time and less energy than anticipated.

We traveled to Southampton, England from Boulder on June 6-7.  The trip, involving two flights took 26 hours from leaving home to arriving,bleary-eyed and exhausted, at our hotel.  Both flights were delayed numerous hours. Michael's blog at http://cbu-neurope1306.blogspot.com details out travail better than could.

Fortunately, we arranged for a limousine (a van really) to take us from Heathrow Airport, London, to Southampton. Michael and I were delighted to see a uniformed man holding a sign, "Michael Borsuk", as we emerged into the main concourse from immigration processing. From the airport, everything went smoothly.

We had planned a two-night stay in Southampton just for this kind of problem so we spent two days in England's historic and still busy port city. It was nearly enough time to overcome the jet lag. We had two days of glorious English weather: 70 degrees and almost cloudless skies.  The locals complained about the horrible winter and wet spring.  We told them English weather is wonderful. They snickered.

We made the most of the fine weather by taking extensive walks around the center of Southampton and, on impulse, catching the ferry to Cowes on the Isle of Wight in the English Channel just off the Southampton-Portsmouth coast.

Southampton is an historic English port city.  Ruins of ancient walls dating back to the eleven hundreds coexist with mid to late 20^th century buildings in no particular style.  A huge shopping mall near our hotel has displaced part of an historic esplanade that marked the shore from which the Mayflower departed for the New World in 1620.  Here and there in the "Old Town" buildings dating from the middle ages survived WW II bombs only to be surrounded by modern apartments built in quasi medieval style mixed with multi story concrete and glass buildings named "Castle House" or "Duke of Wellington House."    Shopping centers for cruise passengers abound.  Modern up-scale housing competes for shore space with marinas, ferry docks and several cruise ship docks.  Saturday there were at least six large cruise ships in port, including the "Royal Princess" a new medium-huge passenger ship and the Queen Mary 2, the last real ocean liner.  The city seems to have something of an identity crisis.

We walked past the former maritime museum, now moved, that had once had a highly praised Titanic exhibit, and we saw the building that was formerly the headquarters of the White Star Line, owners of the doomed ship.  Southampton has many gems that I'm sure most of the people passing through on their way to ships going elsewhere never see.

One particular find was a Breakfast/Deli/Hotel called the Pig in the Wall.  The building, built into the old city wall, had a most eccentric interior.  Michael and I enjoyed a charcuterie platter of locally smoked/cured meats, imported olives and peppers accompanied by homemade apple chutney and fresh crusty bread.  If we ever return to Southampton, I would definitely recommend going back there.

Cowes reminded me a lot of Provincetown, Massachusetts. It is a beach town with lots of cutsie shops, pubs and restaurants on narrow windy streets.  Even early in "the season" crowds of tourists wandered about the streets.  The ferry from Southampton landed in East Cowes (a supermarket, a pub and four streets).  Michael and I walked to the "chain bridge", really a ferry through which iron chains pass enabling it to crawl along submerged chains back and forth across a narrow river between East and West Cowes, the main part of the town.  A diesel engine moves the boat along the chains going ker-chunk, ker-chunk as the ferry makes its five minute trip.  The small boat (?) holds at most eight small English (German, Japoanese, etc.) cars. The ferry operator has to have one of the most boring jobs on earth: He pushes a lever to start and stop the engine and another to raise and lower the gangway.  At each end he moves to an identical cab to repeat the process going the other way.

Cowes is famous for its sailboat regattas, held every summer.  We were there on a Saturday and saw lots of big and small sail boats in the sound between the Isle of Wight and the English mainland.  We saw young people in wet suits standing on surfboards holding on to kite-like sails as the wind carried them across the water.  Other youngsters were swimming at the beach in ice-cold water. Ahh – the English summer.

Sunday morning Michael and I took an early morning walk near our Southampton hotel.  Nothing much was open and the streets were mostly deserted.  It reminded me of my childhood when everything closed on Sunday.  Back at the hotel people were arriving and leaving in mass.  We got a taxi to the pier at 11 AM hoping to get on board before the official noon boarding time.  The security staff had a list of people authorized to board the ship early and much to our surprise we were on the list.  Michael had been informed when booking the trip that Silversea no longer allowed early boarding for anyone, yet they had this secret list that they never told him about. Strange are the ways of the world.

The mandatory lifeboat drill was the highlight, if it can be called that, of the afternoon. All 200 plus guests marshaled in the Panorama Lounge with life vests. We endured a half hour lecture on ship safety and a demonstration on how to don a life vest.  We then formed lines, each person holding on to the right shoulder of the person in from, and marched to the lifeboats for more lecture. Listening to the wonderfully precise English accent of our Cruise Director, Judy, made the whole thing mildly pleasant.

Soon enough it was time to watch the sail out.  The Silver Cloud dropped her lines (ropes), moved away from the pier and headed down the estuary towards the English Channel.  We could see the very large Royal Princess in the distance making her maiden voyage around the Isle of Wight.

This morning we awakened in sight of France.  We were at the mouth of the Seine River.  Honfleur appeared on the west bank. Several miles across the mouth of the river we could see the cranes of Le Havre, a major French port, in the distance.

It was clear that we had entered another world as soon as we went ashore.  Not only were all the signs in French, a language I never studied, but vehicles drive on the right side of the road and we had to side-step dog poop on the sidewalks.  Honfleur is a very old fishing village now devoted to tourism, mostly French. It became famous as a hangout for Impressionist artists in the late nineteenth century and signs about town show photos of some of the paintings of local sights by famous artists.  The town was fortunate to avoid being bombed in both world wars and has many centuries-old buildings and narrow crooked streets.  A beautiful boat basin is in the center of town as well as a picturesque carousel that plays Ravel's "Bolero".  Michael and I enjoyed walking about except for an encounter with a dog that jumped on me and tried to bite my hand.  I screamed; the owner pulled the dog back and apologized.  Fortunately, no harm was done. Strange encounter.

Most of the ship's passengers went on relatively expensive organized tours.  Some went to the nearby beaches of the 1945 D-Day Normandy invasion, others took a much too short in the city, much too overpriced  7 hour bus trip to Paris; and some took a walking tour of Honfleur.  I had read the tour description and decided Michael and I could do at least as well on our own. Instead of trying to see all the churches and monuments, we picked out a few.  Instead of a visit to the Impressionist Boudin Museum, we visited the Musee Erik Satie.  Satie was a pioneering late nineteenth – early twentieth century composer who also drew and painted, wrote and made odd objects d'art. He was said to be wierded out on Absinthe.  The museum is as quirky as he was and most interesting.   Honfleur proved to be a relatively low key start to our northern European journey.