We spent a half-day here in preparation for our morning flight home tomorrow. We visited the Orangerie which has just recently reopened but my favorite part was a visit to Saint Sulpice to see the Rose Line from the “Da Vinci Code”—and we learned stuff. First, the line is actually called the Gnomon Line and it was used for astronomical study. Here’s the Wikipedia entry:

“In 1727 Languet de Gercy, then priest of Saint-Sulpice, requested the construction of a gnomon in the church as part of its new construction, to help him determine the time of the equinoxes and hence of Easter (since Easter Sunday is to be celebrated on the first Sunday following the full moon after the spring equinox). A meridian line of brass was made, running across the floor and then ascending a column or “obelisk” of white marble, nearly 11 meters high, at the top of which is a sphere surmounted by a cross. The column is dated 1743.

“In the south-end window a system of lenses was set up, so that a ray of sunlight shines onto the brass line. [Linda’s Note: We could see the hole in the stained glass window where the light shines in.] At noon on the winter solstice (December 21), the ray of light touches the brass line on the obelisk. At noon on the equinoxes (March 21 and September 21), the ray touches an oval plate of copper in the floor near the altar.

“Constructed by the English clock-maker and astronomer Henry Sully, the gnomon was also used for various scientific measurements: This may have protected Saint-Sulpice from being destroyed during the French Revolution.”

Don’t say you don’t learn stuff here!

The mood picked up again once we got to Luxembourg. Two very lucky things happened to us often-stupid tourists.

Lucky Thing One: We took a drive to the Moselle Valley for lunch on a rainy, foggy day (one of Jim’s adventures carried out basically against the will of his two companions), ate lunch during a torrential rainstorm in a quite lovely restaurant overlooking the Moselle (La Esplanade in Remich, Luxembourg—note there is more than one town in this itty-bitty country though the confusingly named Luxembourg is by far the largest), crossed the bridge so that our niece could “step foot” in Germany, and stumbled upon a museum featuring a rather spectacular Roman villa ruin featuring a very large, restored mosaic floor by following the signs indicating Roman ruins (which draw Jim like a magnet). Huh. Now I say all this without malice, and we did like the German part of the trip, and of course, lunch was nice (but what lunch isn’t “nice” when Jim is picking the place?), but I’m still a little ticked about going in the first place. Haven’t quite figured out the marriage challenge of trying to be accommodating to your partner without losing yourself. But I digress.

Lucky Thing Two (and far more exciting): We had basically one full day in Luxembourg and it just happened that it was the day before their National Day, celebrated much like our Fourth of July. So we were a little bummed that we were missing it by one day! (Of course, when we booked our flights we had no idea this was even happening.) So, how surprised were we to find out that the big celebrations happen on National Day Eve? Yay us! Upon returning from our trip to the Moselle, we discovered maximum preparations in progress for that evening’s party. Since our hotel was right downtown, we were basically in the middle of it all (and extremely grateful that we had decided to return our rental car to the airport that afternoon and didn’t have to worry about parking). The entire downtown was the party venue and the streets were filled with revelers and very loud rock music. We actually managed to have a quiet dinner but then took a little tour of the festivities, because after all, we were there! We happened upon a torchlight parade/ceremony of some sort, but the sad fact was that there were so many people packed around the square that not even the giant video screens that were set up to broadcast the event were visible above the crowd. So, I can’t give you a description. At around 11:30 it occurred to me that perhaps fireworks were part of this event—and I LOVE fireworks. Well, sure enough, they were scheduled for midnight (it doesn’t get really dark till around 10:30 in June—we’re pretty far north). And, we don’t know how this happened though it might be because a friend of ours knows everyone in Luxembourg and may have influenced the location of our hotel room (his old Luxembourg Army buddy owns the hotel—“Luxembourg Army?” I hear you mutter), but our 3rd floor room was overlooking the complete fireworks area. And, since Luxembourg is a very rich country they pretty much spared no expense for their fireworks. We knew we would never know when the finale occurred because we thought we were seeing the finale at least 10 times before the ending. What a show! And what great seats!

First, a little background: Jim has forever said that he doesn’t like Brussels. It isn’t cute, it is full of EU buildings, it’s industrial, etc., etc. That’s why we chose Brugge for our base and not Brussels. But, we have a great economist friend there and he offered to take a day off work (not a small thing for a major-league workaholic) to tour us around.

We had an awesome day, and not just because Philippe is a crazy person (in a good way), his wife (from Louisiana no less) is wonderfully gracious and their home is better than lovely (although all that definitely helped ☺) Brussels is a great city, and Jim had to admit it by the end of day. The old town area is lovely, the EU area is an interesting conglomeration of important-looking buildings, and if it’s industrial, we missed that part. We will definitely try to visit there again when we can spend more time.

That was the good news. The bad news, at least for Jim, was that the visit to Waterloo (the Napoleon-Wellington battle) was less than satisfying. As usual, I suppose we remain spoiled by the U.S. National Park way of doing things. Waterloo did have a visitor’s center, and it did have a cyclorama-type presentation that described the battle. But for Jim, the lack of signage on the site (think Gettysburg) and the fact that there was not one cannon around, even for display purposes, was an egregious insult to the historical importance of the battle. I guess I agree but I didn’t take it quite as personally. The poor man felt compelled to read two books about the battle when we got home to make up for it. And there won’t be any “Jim-standing-by-the-cannon” photo to commemorate the trip like we have for every battle site we’ve ever visited in the U.S. (A weird Jim-compulsion.)

Ypres (ee’ pruh) was a different story. This town was close to a major battlefield of World War I. Therefore, there is a museum there, “In Flanders Fields,” to commemorate it. Now, we may all remember from history class that World War I was a stupid, brutal, nasty war. But, if your memory is at all faded, this museum brings it all back into gruesome focus. (Not that the museum is gruesome, just its topic.) Anyway, Ypres was basically leveled by the end of the war, though most of the destruction happened near the end. At the “front,” the place was basically a mud pit with tunnels, barbed wire and other blocking stuff where the two combatant armies spent 4 years moving back and forth about 100 yards. Way too many people died (like 2 million) and virtually nothing was accomplished. A very bad war (if you want to rank such things).

Now here’s a country with identity issues. Just as in Switzerland, there are different languages spoken in different areas of the country. However, in Switzerland they at least call the language a familiar name—German, French, Italian (there is that 0.5% of Romansh speakers, whatever that is—and to be accurate, the Swiss dialect of German is better referred to as Schweizerdeutsch). In Belgium, the two main languages are Flemish (Dutch) and Walloon (French). I’m told that Flemish and Walloon are different from Dutch and French in the same way that British English is different from American English. Hmmm, maybe they could just call their languages Dutch and French? Ah, it’s all in the history, I suspect.

We stayed in a farm cottage outside of Brugge (or is it Bruges?—rhymes with rouge no matter what the spelling. Different language-speakers spell it differently. Believe me, it gets confusing when you’re trying to find a specific geographic location and the ground and your map’s languages don’t match—things don’t necessarily have to be double-labeled here). The cottage was cute on its own right, and then we had the three resident donkeys, horses, a roe deer with its best friend the goose, homing pigeons, bunnies and assorted other creatures on the property. We somewhat regretted our penchant for sightseeing as we loved being at “home,” too.

Bruges is a lovely old Hanseatic League city. It has canals, too, but they more resemble Venetian canals than Amsterdam canals as the buildings are lapped by water. In Amsterdam, the canals are bordered by roads, which are in turn bordered by buildings. We spent a couple of days wandering the town, eating lunches, visiting churches, watching women make the amazing lace that Belgium is famous for. Once you see how it’s done, you understand why you can only afford either tiny pieces, or those made by students. I opted for student-made placemats.

And then there is the beer. I pretty much hate the taste of beer—any beer. I’ve had (silly) friends make me try various and sundry microbrews over the years saying that “THIS one doesn’t really taste like beer.” Gag. So not true—not even the fruit beers. But, there is a Belgian beer called Kriek. In its original form, it is a cherry beer. And I’ll be darned, it tastes OK. I can still detect “beerishness” but the cherry does a great job of covering. Sadly, we didn’t return to the same pub the next day, so I can’t report on the peach, raspberry or strawberry variants. However, I can report that they sell this very same beer in our local Earth Fare grocery store. Sheesh. (Not that I’m going to buy it. I feel no compulsion to become a fruity beer drinker—I have enough trouble avoiding wine calories. Still, it’s good to know.)

One of our favorite activities is to visit art museums. Here Jim and I are quite compatible as we both appreciate similar art forms for approximately the same length of time (2-3 hours). His goal is to make sure he sees all the “famous” pieces (as designated by our handy Eyewitness tour book); my goal is to learn stuff. So, our time in The Netherlands included multiple museum stops: the Rijkmuseum (Rembrandt’s “Night Watch” and 4 Vermeers!), the Van Gogh museum, and in The Hague, the Mauritshuis (Vermeer’s “Girl with the Pearl Earring”) and the Escher Museum. All the museums had all commentary in both Dutch and English for us monolingual speakers.

Of course, the Anne Frank House was on our tour. It was by far the most crowded attraction of our trip and, for future reference you can buy tickets ahead of time at the Central Train Station so you don’t have to stand in line (not that we knew that ourselves…sigh). Admittedly, a little something is lost when you are sightseeing with hundreds of other people but it was still a sobering experience. Between signage and videos you are reminded of the full story—it is so sad.

On one of our evenings (the rainiest, stormiest night) we went to the home of another friend. Joost (the “j” sounds like a “y” and rhymes with “host”), his wife Maryelle, and their three young daughters live on a houseboat. Which doesn’t exactly describe it. More like a “two-masted sailboat that is their house.” When they get tired of their view of the neighbors, they just sail out, anchor somewhere and enjoy a new view for a weekend! It is very cool and not quite so cramped as you’d imagine, though I’m quite sure I couldn’t live that way as I have become a little too attached to stuff and there is no room for stuff there! Not to mention your stuff better be well battened down. With the birth of their 3rd daughter they are having to move to a house on land, but being the sea-worshipping people that they are, the house is on an island in the Zee formerly known as Zuider. (As a child I learned about the North Sea bay called the Zuider Zee which I guess was still a saltwater body in the 50s although the dam separating it from the North Sea was finished in 1938. But, things change. It’s now a freshwater lake called the IJsselmeer (“ij” is always pronounced like eye; for example, the River Rhine is the Rijn), named for the IJssel River that flows into it.

Dutch is an interesting language. MaryElise kept insisting that it sounds like they’re trying to speak English, but not quite. Admittedly there are a lot of English cognates, although they seem to mean something close to but not exactly what the English word would be. But the spelling can definitely throw you off. Apparently the motto is, “never use one letter when a double-letter will do.” As support I present: bakker (baker), strippenkaart (bus ticket), een yaar (a year), een maand (a month).

As our friend Stefan pointed out, I missed a trip highlight by forgetting to mention that we had a lovely breakfast and visit with Stefan in Zurich before getting on the train to Basel. As you will see in future posts, we try to visit friends wherever we go, and these events are always delightful.

In Zurich, we landed around 8 am and made our way to Stefan’s office. He co-owns a mini-chain of stores called “Drinks of the World,” located in the train stations of Zurich, Basel and Bern. His office is near the train station so after serving us a variety of tasty goodies, coffee and juice and visiting with us for a couple of hours, he graciously walked us to the train station, negotiated the ticket-buying machine (always a thrill when it’s not in English and/or you are clueless about the schedule), and safely got us on the right train, heading in the right direction (also thrilling as you would know if you’ve tried to read a station schedule).

And, as if that weren’t helpful enough, he had the manager of his Basel store meet us at the train when we arrived there, and helped us grossly overpacked Americans get ourselves and our luggage happily on our way to our hotel via taxi. And we got presents! Chocolate for me and wine for Jim. Is this a great friend or what?

Well, if you’re married to an economist who has been saying he thinks we’re in a recession, and then he hears that the most recent retail sales report is phenomenally good, you find out that you’re married to a very honest guy. If that number is even close to accurate, it is most incompatible with a recession and he is very clear about that and would be the first to tell you.

Though we’re traveling and he is very bad at blogging on the road, I’ll see what I can do to get him to write something about this.

Whoo-eee, this is NOT a family town—unless you want to expose your children to quite a wide range of raunchy images. However, once you get over the postcards and the x-rated kitsch, it’s a very nice European city. At the moment, with only one day here so far, I have yet to see a dike (don’t they have dikes here?) or visit a “coffeeshop,” which are called coffeeshops here and do not have apostrophes around them. However, we did walk through a bit of the red light district yesterday and I am here to tell you it is really something. Just as advertised, scantily clad girls pose in doorways or in windows and sell their stuff. I think we were all amazed and torn between staring and being embarrassed to look. The area is not exactly seedy, but just a bit dangerous-looking, with lots of young men wandering the streets which are lined with bars and sex shops. The alleyways with the girls were between this shopping street and a canal. Anyway, it was all very interesting. There is a tour book here in our rental apartment and we read it after we got home yesterday. Our all-time favorite line: “If you visit one of the women, we would like to remind you, they are not always women.” We continue to wonder when exactly a buyer would find this out. All we can say is they look like women.

Yesterday, while it was still sunny (today is alternating cloudy/rainy/stormy) we took a boat tour of the canals. It was very scenic and we learned several things, but again we had a favorite. Along the canals there are iron bars that act as guard rails. They are placed about 9 inches above the ground. They were installed in the 1960’s at great expense to the city. Nonetheless, they extract approximately one car per week from the canals. Apparently drinking, drugs and parking do not mix either.

Our three favorites of the stay: Eden Restaurant in Temple Bar, Les Fréres Jacques on Dames Street, Oliver St. John Gogarty Pub, great food on the third floor, music on the second.

Yesterday morning, my job here in Dublin was to pick up our just-graduated-from-high-school-niece as she is meeting us for the rest of our trip in Europe. In a rather irresponsible moment, I left her itinerary at home and so had no idea when she was arriving, except that it was in the morning.

Cleverly, we thought, we checked the Internet to see when Continental flights were arriving from Newark. Not so cleverly, Jim and I both “remembered” that it wasn’t a grossly early flight, so we concluded that she would be arriving at 9:35 am (the alternative was 7:30—ugh). We also knew that upon arrival she would still have to get through passport control and pick up her luggage, so it would probably be around 10 before she actually got to the arrival hall.

Nevertheless, because I would be absolutely horrified if she got to the arrival hall and I wasn’t there, and because I could not predict the traffic pattern to the airport (they have this WONDERFUL bus with a stop in front of our hotel that goes directly to the airport every 15 minutes—with no traffic the ride is about 20 minutes), I left the room at 8:00. The bus arrived at the front of the hotel at 8:10, there was no traffic problem so I got to the airport at 8:30 and wandered around a bit to find the TVs showing arrival times. There I learned that the 9:35 flight was delayed and would not arrive until 11:30 or so. Sigh…..

Well, I was sleepy and hungry so I decided to walk around a bit, scouting out the breakfast alternatives and how the seating was laid out for my somewhat long wait. At 8:50 I nearly walked past MaryElise. Yikes!!!

Turns out she was on the 7:30 flight (gulp), but it was delayed so she didn’t arrive in Dublin until 8:30 or so. When we met she had just stepped into the arrival hall and hadn’t waited a moment. Spooky.

Of course, this merely strengthens my nearly irrational need to be very early at airports, but hey, look what can happen!