The Great Flower Carpet of Brussels

July 12, 2015 in Travel, Museum

Once every two years a giant flower carpet is installed in the Grand Place (main square) of Brussels, which is 75m long x 24m wide, 1800 square metres of begonias containing around a million flowers. The carpet is sketched on the ground and quicky installed by 120 volunteers in only 4 hours! And then lasts about 3 days before it starts to wilt and is packed up again. I'd seen pictures of this on postcards on previous visits to Brussels, but I was fortunate that my work trip last September aligned with the correct weekend, and I found out with just a few days to spare. I quickly booked a funny little French speaking bed & breakfast on the outskirts of Brussels as it was quite far for a day trip, and went for a visit! This year the carpet was a giant Turkish rug design to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Turkish immigration in Belgium.

Upon arriving in Brussels I spent much of the day at the Musée Royal de l’Armée et d’Histoire Militaire (Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and Military History), quite a large and interesting museum in the slightly old fashioned and slightly worn out style typical of Belgium that I like so much! Being the 100th anniversary of the start of WWI, there was also a large and excellent exhibition about the great war.

After the museum I went to check out the flower carpet, which was as impressive as I expected, although of course it was very densely touristed and difficult to approach! I waited patiently to get to the front of the barriers at a few spots around the carpet for some different angles, and was jealous of the people with inside connections and nice viewpoints out the windows of the old guild houses surrounding the Grand Place! I stayed in town late to also see the music and light show over the carpet.

Dusseldorf Palace and Architecture

June 28, 2015 in Travel

Dusseldorf is the major city closest to Essen where I work, and also the airline hub we land at. Despite being very close, I've never made it there on a Saturday but have used it as a rainy Sunday fall-back location several times, when unfortunately there is much less to do and see with many things closed. Dusseldorf however is very famous for its art museums, and I've enjoyed the permanent collection and travelling exhibitions at the Museum Kunstpalast (Art Palace!) several times, as well as sometimes poking into the modern art museums. The Dusseldorf Palace was new to me, and quite interesting with its pink colour and large grounds, and quite similar to the Rococo palaces in Berlin at Charlottenburg and Schloss Sansoucci.

The Dusseldorf palace Schloss Benrath, was built from 1755-1770 for Charles Theodore, Prince-Elector, Count Palatine and Duke of Bavaria. The old German hierarchy is quite confusing, but obviously these are pretty important titles to have a palace built for you. Seems like he was ruler of the 'Palatinate' area around the Rhine and one of the most important secular princes in the Holy Roman Empire - which is actually the country of Germany until defeated by Napoleon in 1906 and formation of the German Confederation in 1915. Nothing to do with Romans at all, really! The day I visited the palace coincided with a classic Bentley and Rolls-Royce car club meeting for some extra colour. And unfortunately no photos allowed inside the palace itself. Usually these palaces like to charge you another 1-5 euros for a 'photo pass' wristband, which I'm happy to pay, but nothing doing here!

Following my visit to the palace and walk around the landscaped grounds to the Orangerie etc, I went back into Dusseldorf town to check out the permanent collection at the Kunstpalace art musuem, which I hadn't seen before. I particularly liked the architecture in the main foyer, with it's modern stained-glass panelled wall and quite severe style. After finishing at the museum I made my way into the centre of town to the Königsallee (the "King's Avenue") and discovered a brand new commercial precinct that had sprung up since last year - named the "Kö-Bogen" (the "King's Bow"), designed by none other than my favourite architect Daniel Liebeskind, who made the Jüdisches Museum in Berlin among many other impressive buildings.

The Vrijthof - Main square in Maastricht

Maastricht Bookstore-Cathedral and Dead Giraffes

June 15, 2015 in Travel

Maastricht is the furthest-south City in the Netherlands, way down on a little peninsula of borders stretching between Germany and Belgium on either side. It is also a very old and historic city - possibly the oldest in the Netherlands (as well as Nijmegen) - settled since 500BC, conquered by the Romans in the Gallic Wars, and more recently was birthplace of the European Union and Euro currency. Forgetting the history lesson, it is also famous for being one of the only parts of the Netherlands to have hills! It was also a great city to walk around for a day last year, exploring the tourist sights and city streets.

Boekhandel Dominicanen - Book store in a renovated dominican church

I make a point of seeing cathedrals in most towns i visit in Europe, and in this case the first one I walked into surprised me by being actually a bookstore instead! I remembered after the fact about seeing this on lists such as 'most interesting bookstores' etc etc online, but I arrived purely by chance this day. It may seem a shame to repurpose an impressive old cathedral, but actually Maastricht and Europe in general has more cathedrals than they know what to do with! This keeps a stream of tourists coming through and spending money which can be used to help maintain the building. I didn't buy a book, but of course I contributed to the takings of the Cafe...

Brasseries opposite the Vrijthof — Brasseries opposite the Vrijthof

I checked out actually three other churches/cathedrals in Maastricht, each of which were quite interesting in different ways. The Basilica of Saint Servatius on the main Vrijthof square is biggest and most impressive, and I was particularly interested in the carvings and design in the South Portal (the entrance for rich people). The Basilica of Our Lady was also cool for the very dark atmosphere and interesting light. I spent a long day in Maastricht, and managed to also fit in a trip to the modern art museum over the river, the Bonnefanten Museum, which was housed in quite an interestingly designed building - as with many modern art museums I can be more interested in the building than the art!

Maastricht was a walled city, and much of the walls on the southern edge are still up, and make for a nice walk around the ramparts and through the city park (Stadspark) and the older areas of town. There was also plenty of art and sculpture scattered around the city, my favourite of which was the old Bear Pit (berenkuil) in the city park, part of which used to be a zoo i.e. an actual bear pit! I've only shown the dead giraffe and girl on top, but the pit was filled with all sorts of wildlife sculptures around the walls and bottom. No trip to the Netherlands is complete without stocking up at the supermarket before heading back to Germany, so of course I grabbed plenty of my favourite Dutch junk food again this time...

The empty bear pit (Berenkuil) in Maastricht City Park

British Sunbathers on Weymouth Beach

March 13, 2015 in Travel

English beaches always surprise me with just how much 'stuff' is on them. In New Zealand, beaches are basically sand + water, maybe a cafe up the road if you're lucky (not counting Mission Bay or Takapuna of course). But at Weymouth, there are a million beach chairs for hire, changing sheds, rental paddle boats and kayaks, organised games of football and volleyball, fairground rides, minigolf and even Punch & Judy is still around. Maybe I'm spoiled by the large amount of sandy real estate on our beaches, but in summer Weymouth is packed almost from edge to edge. Not quite Copacabana, but far beyond what Muriwai looks like even in the peak of summer.

*note* please click through and watch on the vimeo website for HD video quality.

All this action on the beach does make for interesting sight seeing and people watching, and in fact I made the video above to show a bit more what it looks like in person. And for something to do to keep me entertained for an hour or two one afternoon. These pictures look quite different to those from my last visit in the UK winter, which you can see here. I also enjoyed checking out the old fashioned Punch and Judy show, which i guess is quite an idiosyncratic British type thing.

Not much more to say about this really... just a selection of images to show Weymouth in all it's summer glory. Definitely a lot more going on here in summer rather than winter, and a lot more pleasant to walk around and explore. Check out the previous blog post for a quick history lesson about Weymouth including the royal holiday visits from King George, making this one of the first modern tourist destinations. Oh, and potentially the site where the Black Death first reached the UK!

Classic (I assume soggy) British fish & Chips

Portsmouth Historic Dockyards

February 18, 2015 in Museum, Travel

One for my Navy friends today! After our holiday to the Channel Islands and France I had a day with my parents in Weymouth before heading to Germany for work, and we visited the important Naval town of Portsmouth and the Historic Dockyards. This is part of the Portsmouth Naval Base, the oldest in the Royal Navy, in use since the 15th Century, and at one time the largest industrial site in the world! The museum part of the base is a huge tourist attraction, home to several large restored and historically important warships, and many different museums.

The main attraction is the HMS Victory, a 104-gun first-rate ship of the line and Admiral Lord Nelson's flagship from the Battle of Trafalgar, the most decisive victory against Napoleon's navy. Nelson was shot and killed at the end of the battle, and the spot on the deck where he fell is marked by a plaque. He was then - respectfully and carefully, I am sure - stuffed into a cask of brandy and lashed to the mast for the long trip home, before he was interred in St.Paul's Cathedral, which I visited on the way home from Germany! The ship itself is very well preserved, with lots of interesting displays, and interesting to imagine working and fighting in the cramped conditions, and low ceilings. The HMS Warrior was another interesting ship, fully restored as a museum. It was the first steam powered and iron-hulled armoured warship in the Royal Navy, although did not see long service before becoming obsoleted by new mastless armoured war ships, and was turned into a floating oil jetty among other ignoble uses before eventually being restored to almost new condition.

The Mary Rose museum displays the remains of King Henry VIII's warship which was rediscovered in the Solent and salvaged at great expense in 1982. This is an extremely important archaeological find, as there was a huge number of well-preserved artefacts recovered including weapons, sailing equipment and many personal items from the crew. Even the ship's dog was recovered! Many of the items on board can be traced by the cabins they were found in, like medical equipment belonging to the barber-surgeon (yes, same guy!). Conservation of the hull has been underway since 1994, due to be completed only in 2016, by impregnating the wood with polymers and now in the final 5-year drying out period! This was a really interesting and well designed museum - the new museum opened in 2013 - and probably the best part of the dockyards for people not so interested in actual ships!

The last part of the dockyards I managed to visit was the HMS Alliance, part of the Royal Submarine Museum, which required a water taxi ride across the busy harbour. The Alliance is a WWII-era submarine and the only one of its kind still around. Supposedly this is a relatively 'comfortable' submarine designed for the huge Pacific theatre, but it was still very cramped and claustrophobic - but lots of interesting equipment to look at for engineering nerds or fans of brass valves and gauges....!

Mont St. Michel and Minas Tirith

January 30, 2015 in Travel

After the day in St. Malo we drove along the Brittany coast to stay at small town Le Vivier-sur-Mer, in a hotel with very little English spoken, but an excellent restaurant for dinner. This town was chosen as being close to Mont St. Michel, one of France's top tourist destinations and somewhere I had been hoping to visit for several years, and doubly so since my parents moved just over the Channel from it.

Mont St. Michel is an island commune, built as a fortified city in the mouth of the Couesnon River, with a normal population of only 44 people, but over 3 million visitors per year! The hill is topped by the monastery and abbey which gives the island it's name, which has been around since the 8th century, with other uses all the way back to the 5th century. This area has some of the fastest tides in the world, said to be as fast 'as a galloping horse' - it is completely surrounded by water at high tide, or mud flats 21km deep at low tide!

The island was very interesting to visit, although I'm glad we arrived shortly after opening time as it gets very busy on the narrow windy street. Street, singular, as there is only the one winding up from the bottom to the Abbey at the top, going past all the ancient buildings now filled with expensive (200+ euro) hotels, expensive restaurants, cheap bakeries, tacky souvenir shops, and some museums in need of renovation. While the city contents may not be very exciting, the actual architecture and setting, and the Abbey at the top were much better and definitely worth the visit.

The fortified city was the inspiration behind the design of Minas Tirith in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and photographically very interesting, although it would be much better to visit at a time without so many tourists! I did wait patiently in many places for these photos, although it would also be preferable to visit late in the day for better light - one of those places you have to keep going back to, to get the right combination of weather, light, business for really top photos. Another opportunity I missed was to drive down the coast slightly and get the classic postcard photo across the mud flats which you will see several hundred versions of with a quick google image search. While I was a little put out by some touristic influences, overall I really enjoyed seeing Mont St. Michel, and would definitely go back again if it was on offer! And of course, like traffic, I didn't consider myself to be a tourist in this situation :)

The Great Flower Carpet of Brussels

Dusseldorf Palace and Architecture

Maastricht Bookstore-Cathedral and Dead Giraffes

British Sunbathers on Weymouth Beach

Portsmouth Historic Dockyards

Mont St. Michel and Minas Tirith

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