Hand… to Throw

Posted: 10th August 2011 by seanon in Uncategorized
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As fun as European Vacasean 2011 has been so far, I highly doubt that I would have chosen Belgium as my holiday destination (particularly considering the mostly poor weather we’ve had) without some sort of motivation. This motivation was a wedding… The marriage of 2 of the most genuinely nice people I’ve had the privilege of knowing.

The wedding brought us to Antwerp, from what I understand one of the, if not the largest port city in Europe. Even arriving at the train station on some super deep subterranean railway (seriously, we had to climb like 6 escalators to get to the surface) you are given an idea of the scale of the place. After a 20-30 minute walk through a very busy, but not overly crowded shopping district we arrived at hotel matelotte, a cute “boutique hotel” as Alison would call it, with very tiny rooms but modern in design, though I suppose space would be hard to come by in a place like Antwerp, in the heart of a historical center, close to all the shopping you might need.

It was hard to overlook the charm of this city, the old buildings, the cafe, patio lined streets and squares. All of the cool stuff we’d seen in the other cities we visited in Belgium with the added benefit of apparently being designed for the amount of traffic that would be going through it. I don’t know what the opposite of the straw that broke the camels back is, but this is it. I don’t like cities in general, but I think I fell in love with Antwerp. I’m sure that it had a lot to do with where we were staying since everything was so close. Definitely on my list of places you should see if you’re in this part of the world.

We didn’t have a ton of time for site seeing, and the like because we were only there for 3 days, 1 full of travel time despite our best efforts to get there early, in order to have time to find me something to wear to the wedding the following day. And of course, the final day being a planned hangover day… I’m pretty fun at weddings I think… Better to plan ahead amiright?

After the check-in at the hotel we rushed out to find me a shirt to wear to the wedding, I hate shopping to begin with, the bonus of actually NEEDING to find something made it worse, several shops, a handful of euro and a couple hours later I had what I needed, and we were back to the hotel looking for a special place to eat. I told the gentleman at the hotel that I was looking for some meat, and he went ahead and made reservations for us at Estro Armonico, he advised that Al should not wear heels, good advice… We made our way into an inner courtyard of one of the blocks within the city, like 5 mins from the hotel, and down into a cellar, with a fire pit in the middle  where our chef was warming bread and cooking meat right in the middle of the dining room. It was still early but the room was completely candle lit, save for the light coming through the cellar doors, and from the fire. A bottle of wine, and a perfectly cooked smoke flavored steak later we were on our way, way to go reception guy, one of the most unique dining experiences I’ve had. Couldn’t recommend this place any more if you’re in the area.

Next was the wedding, the event itself pushed my own wedding out a few years I think just so that our mutual friends don’t have an easy time comparing them. What a stellar event that was, open bar, alcohol ninjas filling our glasses while we’re not looking and never being seen, on top of that, a pile of new friends and a DJ that wasn’t terrible. Congrats to the bride and groom on the wedding and the truly spectacular event, and a truly heartfelt thank you for the encouragement to head to Europe on Vacasean! wouldn’t have done it without you!

 

A Splash of German Charm

Posted: 1st August 2011 by seanon in Travel
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After the onslaught of busy cities so far into the trip Alison assured me that Bacharach would change all that, so I came in with pretty high expectations of the cosy little town on the Rhine, though with my trademark level of skepticism.

We got off the train with a handful of other travelers into and otherwise unmanned train station, by the time I got my pack on appropriately the place was a ghost town. Honestly, there are no employees here, simply a rather picky ticket vending machine (more on that later). Alison was right so far, this was not like the other cities we’d visited so far on this trip. Definitely more my speed.

We had reservations at hotel Kranenturm, the directions from the station were pretty simple, go to main street, right, 3rd street right… Right on… By the time we reached the hotel we had seen more than half the town. The streets were tiny, all cobblestone, and lined with craft shops and “cute” restaurants. The place clearly thrived off the tourists that come to stay at the youth hostel in the castle that was situated high above the town, and various hotels and pensions scattered around town.

Arriving at the hotel we met our host Fatima, a former teacher turn hotel owner who was more than happy to share her story, the story of the town, and anything else the tourist in us needed to know to fully take in Bacharach. A host in the truest sense of the word, she certainly made us feel welcome and at home while we are there. A stark contrast to the hotels we stayed in at the cities. I couldn’t recommend the place enough, though don’t take my novice travelers opinion for it, the place also comes highly recommended by Rick Steeves (been on his list of places to stay for 25 years Fatima told us), who just so happened to be there one of the nights we were there… True story…

Anyway, by the time we got settled in it was fairly late, so we decided to take a little walk and have some diner. We ended up at Posthof, a former seat of the Templars, now restaurant. Our waiter was awesome, the place was pretty full, he appeared to be the only one working there, and was on top of everything. Easily the best service we’d had since we left home. Food was good, and the local beer was also really good. We didn’t notice at the time but the cloister we sat in was directly below the ruins of an old cathedral, quite a beautiful sight when we noticed it the following day.

We started out the following more in the rain, heading down to the dock for our trip down the romantic region of the Rhine, we only had 1 more day there so we had to do it today despite the rain. It was beautiful, the clouds creeping around the mountains and castles really did provide an eerie backdrop for the adventure. But this was short-lived, I can’t explain it but through sheer willpower alone I believe Alison dispersed the clouds and for the first time I could remember there were blue skies and sunshine… Hey what do you know, they serve beer and pretzels on this thing…. Perfect… As cool as it was in the overcast, we had a beautiful day to be on the river in the sun… In fact I sunburnt my face… It was worth it.

We ended up in the town of rudesheim the last stop for the boat, and a pretty prototypical coastal town. It was a cute little place to be sure, but we only had an hour to get back to the boat or we’d be stuck there for another couple hours. So we grabbed a sausage to walk around with… Let me tell you about the sausages here… They’re frigging long, I think they do it that way because they cook faster when they are thin, but the bun is tiny… I’m convinced the bun is only used as a handle for the thing.. It is tiny in comparison, but delicious nonetheless.

When we got back we climbed to the castle overlooking the town and the Rhine.. It was a long exhausting climb, but worth it, they had beer up there, and a hell of a view. As I mentioned this was a youth hostel though so there were kids running around playing with wooden swords and screaming… Annoying lil pests but I didn’t care too much at the time.

We had diner at the hotel that night, Rick Steeves thought it was a good idea to interrupt while we were eating though, the nerve… The tables around us were full and the people were hooting and hollering. It’s all good though it was a short visit, and kind of neat that he was there, seeing as many of the people were there because of his books and shows.

If you’re in this part of the world you absolutely must see this place, it is so charming and full of history that I don’t know how any traveller could have a bad time there.

(H)Amster(GOD)dam

Posted: 27th July 2011 by seanon in Travel
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We spent a night in Amsterdam last night, at a pretty dingy over priced hotel. It was weird Al managed to talk them into upgrading our room to “deluxe” because they didn’t fulfill her ridiculous request for a room without carpet… It’s a hotel for shits sake! Don’t they all have carpet? For what it’s worth it was the NH charleton, avoid it if you can but from what I understand the hotels there all have a certain grime quotient that needs to be overlooked, so maybe it wasn’t that bad… Certainly a far cry from the live jazz piano filled lobby of the Mariott in Ghent.

We rushed from the train to check in to the hotel so we could get over to the Van Gogh museum. A bit of a line outside but we didn’t need to wait long to get in. We hadn’t eaten so we stopped at the café inside and was surprised by the selection in the cafeteria style eatery, pasta bolognese! A cold beer and Al even found a little bottle of wine! Wasn’t overpriced at all either.

More importantly the museum itself was pretty rad, there was a lot of pieces, and a little bit of knowledge that in no way felt overwhelming. I feel like I remember everything I read while I was in there. It was neat to see the originals of things I’ve seen in books and copies of. I think my favorite was “blossoms”, especially the way it was exhibited. They showed earlier similar pieces, as well as pieces of Japanese art that inspiration was taken from (they did similar things for many of the pieces). This one stood out to me because the early stuff had very little contrast between the subject and the background, where in blossoms there is a vibrant background and it really made the flowers pop from the canvas. Make no mistake I don’t pretend to know a damn thing about art, but the way this was presented even gives the layman some perspective as to why Van Gogh is so hilly regarded.

With all that culture out of the way, we strolled the streets though the downtown area and through the red light district. In the end I’m still not entirely sure what all the fuss is about Amsterdam, seems like just another city in which many of the inhabitants wear cannabis cologne. I’ve said it before but I’m not a huge fan of cities in general especially when I don’t have some focused activities and preferably a friend who lives there.

I’m on a train to Bacharach Germany right now… We’ve got 4 connections to make before we get there… A bit of a hassle for sure but Alison tells me this will be more my speed, and from what I’ve seen so far it would appear to be true!

Couple Days in Ghent

Posted: 26th July 2011 by seanon in Travel
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I don’t have a ton to say about Ghent, we arrived during the Gentse Feesten, which is a 10 day music festival with stages scattered around the historical center. Our hotel was perched right in the middle of this, literally 3 doors away from what I believe is the main stage,certainly seemed the biggest. As you might have guessed has a pretty contrasting list of pros and cons.

During the day Ghent is pretty cool, restaurants and tea-rooms line the streets, and you can always find a place to sit and sample a wide variety of local beers. During our stay there was a really impressive selection from place to place with very little overlap. I did my best to be a good tourist and try the gamut. My recommendations on this front is the karmeliet trippel, and the westmalle trippel, both Trappists, and both excellent. I learned (a little too late might I add), that tripel translates to triple (shocking I know…) and is referring to the strength, I was several tripels in when our waiter served me a bottle and a glass and I noticed that it was 9.4%… shhhheeeeessshhh…

Because of all the traffic in the squares this time of year though, service felt pretty bad, and there was a lot of waiting around, and pushing through crowded streets. I’m the sort of guy who likes to go at my own pace and I really didn’t feel like I could here.

We did a couple touristy things though, we took a guided tour around the canal, but the guide was sort of hard to understand, and didn’t have too much flavor in there to keep my attention. We also toured a castle in the middle of town (name is escaping me at the moment), that was home to instruments of murder and torture… Neat stuff, but really off putting with the events of the feswtival happening outside, particularly the singing of songs from Pocahontas, and Mary Poppins… What a contrast.

The biggest downside to the whole experience to me, is that the whole place pretty much stank of urine the whole time we were there, they actually have completely exposed plastic urinals scattered around the city, convenient for the male population sure, but there are certain consequences to encouraging people to pee in public streets, the smell is the most obvious, it is also creepy to see some dude staring at you when you walk by when you know he’s got his junk out… Just weird…

I don’t think Ghent this time of year is my kind of place, but I could definitely see the potential if it were simply the local traffic, where you could really appreciate the charm of the old city.

Oh well! Off to Amsterdam for the night, first stop van gogh museum!

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