Wednesday 15 February 2012

Abstract stuff

George's birthday

Last Saturday we went to the three crowns to celebrate George's birthday. Apologies to Kate who was celebrating hers elsewhere the same night.

Suz and Brig were down from Bristol for the weekend-which is always nice.

FYI- that isn't George being drawn on.

Friday 3 February 2012

Painting, Tintin, fudge and beer

Day two in Bruges.

Started off today with a great breakfast of fruit, juice, coffee, croissant, bread rolls, regular bread, egg, butter and six slices of cheese (and one already cheese).




The Groeninge museum contains a lovely collection of Flemish art. I say lovely. The first half is saints, torture, crucifixion and rich people. The second half is modernist work, which is a little weaker. Bizarrely there is a painting of a corrupt judge being flayed alive, which was commissioned for the courthouse for judges to see.



Brilliant lunch. Massive veggie pile.

Then snow. Lots of snow. A bit more snow... And then the Tintin shop. Actually it also has a massive collection of other comic books... Including the complete 'walking dead' in Flemish.

More wandering in the snow followed by coffee, fudge, truffles and a potter back in what, by now, felt like a blizzard.

Dinner and a selection of Belgian beers then home.

City break in Bruges

This morning Sophie and I set off for a short break in Bruges. If I'm honest the only real information I had about the city came from watching 'In Bruges' and an interview with Colin Farrell where he said it was boring. So the decision was made in our usual slightly haphazard way.

Travelling by train to mainland Europe is much more civilised than by plane. It took a few minutes to check in and despite the train being faulty we set off only a few minutes late. Worryingly much of the Belgian landscape seems to look like Lincolnshire (where my parents live). I say worryingly, it's only worrying for the Belgians really.





We checked into the hotel (walwyck) and set out on foot for a potter about town. One of the first things we noticed was that it was a lot smaller than it looked on the map. In a few minutes we had covered most of the area we had planned to take a look at. Slowing down a little we decided to look for the tintin shop. We didn't find it, but we did find the cinema, town hall and the tourist information.

Back to hotel to warm up.

All the restaurants seemed to have exactly the same menu. This seemed odd until we realised that not only did the restaurants on one street go through to the ones on the next street, three venues next to each other were joined together inside and appeared to share staff and a kitchen.

Tomorrow we are going to try some old paintings and some pottering.