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!

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.

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!

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!

I tell you what though, the lagoon under these circumstances is pretty damn good. We started off with a buffet breakfast that was seriously over priced but whatever… The views from the dinning room themselves were fantastic, (i’ll attach a photo asap). It was fairly chilly outside so the water felt super warm, and really seemed closer to blue milk than blue water… But salty to the taste(you’re not supposed to taste it). The first hour and a half our small crew pretty much had the run of the place and it was awesome! We tried the waterfall massage, steam room and had team facials (photo to come!). Shortly after people started to arrive the bar opened and the fellas had the namesake blue lagoon cocktails sparkling wine and blue carcoa , and the ladies had beers (what the?…). Much less fun in the crowded pool though, significant portion of the population consisting of old men in banana hammocks… It was time to go!

We waited a while longer for everyone to wash the sludge they call rejuvenating off ourselves and then took a walk around the lagoon grounds while we waited for the shuttle to arrive, to take us back to the airport. We still had 4 hours before our plane boarded… The Iceland airport offers nothing of any sort of entertainment value… These next few hours were quite brutal. When we got on the plane,I learned that they had a drink special, jäger and a beer! 6€!… of course I did…:) anyway long ass flight, I was beat when we finally landed in Brussels, and was thrilled with our decision to stay at the hotel at the airport… Walking through the airport I discovered the most amazing thing! Vending machine with waffles in it! Hello Belgium!

We were greeted at the airport by the bride to be, who was providing tourist survival kits! Much appreciated! Then I proceeded to pass the eff out after some low quality high price tag room service. After being awake for 40ish hours I was just happy to have found a bed.

We woke up and quickly hopped a train from Brussels to Ghent, a university town that is home to numerous music festivals this time of year! The trip itself was short and pretty uneventful, I broke into the iPad for the first time really, and started reading a song of ice and fire, all of which I’ll discuss at a later time!

Vacasean Out!

Al and I are heading off on vacasean tomorrow! This time we’re off to Belgium with stops in Iceland, Germany, and the Netherlands. So let the blogging commence.

Timing of this thing is pretty bad, we just recently moved back to New Brunswick, and we’re in the middle of renovations, and well it’d be kind of nice to see those done, oh well, I’m sure it will all be looked after while we’re gone! No time to worry about that now though, we gots tuh go! We fly out of Halifax via Iceland air, which leaves us with a 12+ hour layover near Reykjavik, trouble is it’s in the middle of the night, and I don’t sleep well on planes (or anything mobile) at all, and then fly out again at 4 in the afternoon. Thing is it would have been a pretty cool day in Iceland, but I fully expect to be blown away tired by the time we get there (it’ll feel like 2am, instead of 5am), and no more sleep for 14hrs could be brutal. Anyway! from there a short jaunt to Brussels for a well earned sleep, and then on to Ghent in the morning! Anyway, I’ll try to get some daily updates and of course pictures as internets permits!

The Need

I had been using a playstation 3 in my bedroom essentially as little more than a network media player. I recently acquired a desktop monitor with an HDMI input, and figured that since it’s not terribly comfortable, I don’t do much gaming in the bedroom anyway, I should move it into my office where it may get some more use for it’s primary function. As you may know, I also blog about video games (http://www.degenerategamer.com), and to have a system to play in the office, and to be close to my recording gear would save me some hassle in the long run. So I began my search for a network media player to fill the applied use of the PS3 in the bedroom.

After looking for some recommendations from friends, and finding that very few of them use a network media player, I was put on to the Patriot Box Office by a friend who mentioned that he’d heard good things about it.

The main features I was looking for were:

• HDMI output
• full 1080p support
• intergrated NIC (wireless a plus but not required, prefer wired for this purpose anyway).
• Relatively cheap price point (if I can get another PS3 for roughly the same cost, I’d prefer that since it does everything I need anyway).

The Device

Patriot describes their entertainment center companion as;

…a media player that frees your digital media library from the constraints of a PC and bridges digital media to your home entertainment system to bring your entire media library to the comfort of your living room.

It’s a pretty accurate description, this relatively small system serves as an access point to media you may be sharing all over your network, As a long time user of PS3 Media Server, I was able to locate my share just as easily as you would expect to. The Box Office does have an HDMI, standard RCA, and optical audio out ports, and support for full 1080p output. It unfortunately does not include an internal wireless adapter but does have 2 available USB slots, and claim to support many USB wireless adapters (including patriot’s own), sold seperately. It also supports thumb drives via those same ports, and I’d assume external hard drives as well but I haven’t tried.

The box office also supports the installation of a 2.5″ hard drive (also sold seperately), which I have found to be fairly important to the experience as a whole which I will get into more detail on in the “In Practice” section below. Installing the hard drive was very easy and after a quick format was ready to go.

I picked up the device on sale, for $90, and it included a $35 mail-in rebate, so definitely cheaper than the ps3 from the outset.

In Practice

The Box Office interface was pretty straight forward and intuitive, the menus are well laid out. I do like the addition of the preview pane for videos so you can get a glimpse of the video before throwing it on. Certainly helpful in series situations where you have forgotten where you have left off. however, even when disabled, the time it takes for the device to load the metadata about the currently selected file creates some pretty significant lag (at least when using UPNP media server software, files on the installed hdd aren’t nearly as bad) when navigating a list of media. This is particularly cumbersome when trying to page through a long list of files, as it will often appear to lock up while it loads metadata seemingly prematurely. This perhaps could be resolved by slightly increasing the wait time before a file is selected. I did not see an option for this while I was navigating the setup menu. I have been working around it by better management of the files on my media server, but it would be nice if it were a bit less sensitive there.

Before installing the hard drive into the box office, I was having issues with navigating certain media formats, basically anything 720p or higher, when running from a UPNP server, was unable to fast forward at a speed greater than 2x, ‘goto’ or ‘skip’. This was especially frustrating for me because of the way I intended to use the Box Office, as I mentioned I was using the Box Office in the bedroom, and falling asleep in the middle of a movie is a fairly frequent thing to happen, so having to wait for a 2x fast forward, an hour into a movie was EXTREMELY tedious and was easily a deal breaker for me. The only solution I could think of was to get a hard drive for it and start copying files to the device itself. I didn’t have a spare SATA drive kicking around sadly, so I had to order one in, pretty much doubling the cost of the device, but really, what a difference it made. Not only did copying the files directly to the device circumvent the issue with the media navigation from UPNP servers, it also resolves it. That’s right, after installing the hard drive I was able to easily navigate media directly from the UPNP server without issue. So with that, I say installing a hard drive to this device is mandatory, even if you have a small drive kicking around it will drastically improve the Box Office as a whole, but if you don’t have one, definitely factor it in with the cost, you do need one. It didn’t resolve the menu latency sadly, but that is definitely a lesser evil.

The full function remote supports, ‘goto’ timestamps, ‘cm skip’ (commercial skip [30 secs]), and direct access to the browser and setup screens. It feels a little cheap, like you wouldn’t want to drop it more than a few times but it does work, and the buttons feel fine and it does work as expected.

Afterthought:

After I purchased the Box Office, Netflix streaming was introduced to Canada, I hoped that the system would natively support it but sadly it doesn’t. It requires the upnp media server PlayOn, which does support netflix, sadly the software is 80$, which would put the cost of my device up to about equal that of a PS3… if I were looking into doing this again, it would be on my short list of features to look for.

The Bottom Line

The Patriot Box Office is a media server that does work as advertised with a relatively low, but somewhat deceiving price tag. If you’re the kind of guy who has old hard drives kicking around at all times, then this will be a really cheap option for you, however if you don’t you absolutely must factor in the purchase of a hard drive for the unit to get the max enjoyment out of it. Good quality video over the network is a treat and the interface is functional and intuitive.

At this point I do feel like I’m missing out on Netflix support because I don’t have a PS3 in there anymore, and so if I were to do it all over again, I would most likely spend the extra dollars and just get another ps3. But, I must admit, the Box Office is a very solid device and I am pretty happy with it overall, and before this netflix piece, it was definitely worth the money.

To sum it up, 90$ for the device itself + 50$ for a hard drive, $50 for a wireless adapter if you need that, and finally +80$ for the software to add Netflix (and many other network streaming sites to be fair [Hulu, Pandora, CBS,CNN, etc..]) support, you are honestly right in the same ball park as a new PS3. Using the PlayOn media server for netflix isn’t terribly responsive from the box office UI though in my brief testing, certainly no where near the inteface on the ps3, and doesn’t allow you to search.

Millencolin Tickets

As per tradition, had my buddy shoot me a shot of the tickets for the show… very exciting. I listened to a lot of Millencolin back in the day, and have seen them once at a warped tour one year. Absolutely loved it, and love them and have for a really long time. It wasn’t too long ago, actually probably a few weeks before I heard about that show that I dug out the album again and I couldn’t put it down for a solid week, and it’s been in steady rotation since. I loaded up a grooveshark widget of the album they’re touring (the 10 year anniversary of), Pennybridge Pioneers, it comes highly recommended by me, but you can decide that for yourself.

Not going to say a lot here… this is the soundtrack from the game Shatter, which I am fairly fond of, mostly because the music was so entrancing that it made me want to keep going.

Blackalicious

Added 2 tracks to the playlist here, “Make you Feel That Way”, this song just makes me feel good… nice and slow and some catchy as all hell lines. And “Alphabet Aerobics”,which is just plain brilliant in terms of content, it’s pretty amazing that he pulls that off really.

Strung Out

Turns out that the day I arrive in Toronto next month, Strung Out is in the city. That makes me very happy. They’ve always been one of the most consistent bands in punk rock as I know it, and are pretty good at getting me fired up. I couldn’t find a good link to share the music however, so take this average youtube video instead.