London Belguim trip 2010

 London Belguim trip  21/6/2010

We left Israel in the early hours of the morning from the  airport that was very busy and flew to Brussels arriving 4 hours later to an empty almost deserted airport.  We travelled to central Brussels where we walked around and saw the most  important squares , Cathedrals parks , it was a warm day and many people were outside.
We had a booking on Eurostar for 4pm and if you miss your train you loose your money so we made sure to leave ourselves lots of time to get to Brussels Midi station. Taking the Eurostar is like taking an aeroplane, security passport control etc. and your seat is numbered exactly.  The British police are keen to check whoever enters the UK. It is a special high speed train and is very smooth and it runs at 300 km/hour. You can only feel the speed when the train runs along the side of a highway and you zap past speeding cars.
On Saturday was the Queen Birthday and they had Trooping the Colour not far from us.  I was trying to walk back to the flat but the roads were blocked and was stuck on the pavement by the Horse Guards House.  The next thing a carriage came out with Prince William and Camilla and then another one with 2 princesses Beatrix and Alexandra.  What was also interesting to see was that all the invited guests were dressed very smartly in suits and women all wearing hats. So looking out of the balcony of the flat in the evening it looked like a fashion parade.
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In London we saw 3 plays and a musical the Science and Natural History Museum and I took a long walk around the newly developed area along the Thames.
We took the Eurostar on Thursday at St Pancreas Station and 2 hours later changed trains in Brussels for Antwerp.  With a Eurostar ticket from London you have 24 hours to get to anywhere in Belguim  on your ticket.
Our hotel was in walking distance from the Antwerp Central Station and the important places to see are all in walking distance of the centre of the city.
We went to the Diamond museum which explains how Antwerp became the diamond centre it is.  Brugge was historically a diamond centre and Amsterdam later as well.  Unions in Amsterdam put wages up and the industry moved to Belgium where wages were lower.
It strikes one that when you are in Milan with all the fashion shops how does one decide which shop  to go into. In  Antwerp this is the case with diamonds and jewellery. It appears that all shops or restuarants close one day a week and they all choose a different day some either Saturday or Sunday or week day.
Antwerp has dozens of art museums but the most recommended in Rubins' house where you walk around with and recorder gadget which explains the history of the house garden and the part the Rubins played in the develoment of  the movement away from the Italian or Renaisance art on religious subjects.
By the time we had explored this house thourily Astrid was tired and we went back to the hotel, I went to visit the Myborg collection which includes Breugel paintings  both Peter and Jan Bruegel.  Pictures that are well known from books, and other artists followed Bruegel style.
We enjoyed walking around the streets seeing the building Cathedrals , the building of the Flemish Opera then on the River you have a medieval castle which has become a naval museum.  There is also a plaque to the Canadian forces that fought there in WW2.
We took a walk to the Zorenborg neighbourhood which was build between 1890 till 1910, street after street of 2 or 3 story narrow houses  facing the streets.  Most of this is preserved while areas closer to the centre of the city have replaced the original houses by new higher building.  We only had the first day with warm weather and then you see everyone out drinking beer or coffee on the pavements cold weather you don't get that atmosphere.

We took a train to Brugge and luckily it was over the weekend so the train gave a special fare.  The whole of  Brugge is considered a outdoor museum , narrow cobbled streets that cars can't park on so they all use bicycles.  At the station we took a photo of the extensive bicycle park there.
We went to the Beer Museum there and learned  all we could about Belguim beer.  It is a brewery that worked till the 1960s  The building was deseigned so that after the malt had been boiled it was pumped to a higher room that could catch the breeze and cool it to 15C which is the temp that it has to stay at for 10 days to ferment correctly.
In Belgium the beer has a high alcohol content and they prefer to get it on tap or from a bottle.  The collection of tins they showed were for export or foreigners. At pubs each brand is served in a special glass of the brand 330 ml. with a line marked and the head above the line.
We went to a vegetarian restuarant  De Bron that only serves lunch and has a set menu without any choice , you can have a small medium or large platter.  This place must have a name for itself as it was not well signposted but  was quite busy.
60 % of Belguim is Flemish speaking which I liked as one felt you knew the language as we know Afrikaans.  Signs in Dutch are very clear to me as well as subtitles on TV but spoken Dutch I could hardly grasp what they were saying.
From what I understand there is a language crises in Belgium and the country might one day split up. Historically in 1830 Catholic Belgium split from Protestant Netherlands.  But today the Catholic church does not have the influence in Europe it once had, so religion no longer unites the Flemish with the Waloons. English has now become more important than the other official language and the standard of spoken English in Flanders is very good from TV or from using computors. Very old inscriptions you see in French but otherwise it does not exist in the Dutch speaking areas and you are more likely to see English signs.
We arrived back in Israel to a heatwave and it is 36 C in the day so you could only go out at night here.