40 Heures dans Brussels, Belgium

(40 hours in Brussels, Belgium)

We said good bye to my beautiful Paris a few days ago and started our long round about journey home.   Home is kind of a relative word as we will be staying with my parents and then Daniel's parents on our way up to Connecticut.   

So much luggage!

Our first stop is Brussels, Belgium. Chosen at random on our way to Amsterdam also chosen at random.  We only had a little less than 48 hours in Brussels so we planned our trip very closely on the priorities of the culture ... Chocolate, waffles, fries (they apparently invented them), and BEER.  There was not time to be waisted on dallying on Brussel Sprouts.

 After getting in we headed down to the Grand Place which is suppose to be beautiful with ornate old buildings. It was crazy crowded with mobs of people in orange and yellow shirts, and pep bands blaring, and two chicken suits running round, and small raquette balls that kept rocketing out of nowhere.

Turned out to be the National Championship of Balle Pelote.  It is a weird cross of handball played like tennis with the addition of goal post. In short it was horribly confusing, luckily two nice gentlemen tried to explain the game to us as we jumped back and forth between their broken english and our broken french, talk about a language exercise. 

The orange guy in the rear is the going to bat the tiny ball with his hand.

We ended up staying for the entire game we were both disappointed that yellow was not able to mount a full 4 game turn around.  I am debating starting up my own league in Connecticut. The game took up most of our afternoon so we headed out to dinner afterwards.

First beer of the Trip, Hoegaarden Rosée.

Followed up by our second beer of the trip Hoegaarden Grand Cru, which was a high gravity.  We also had dinner but we came for the beer.  We were pretty beat from the day so we called it an early night.

You may have heard of the famous boy peeing fountain in Brussels, if you haven't, you shouldn't, and if you have thank me you have now seen it and move on to the next thing on your Belgium itinerary.   Ta Da...

We went back to the Grand Place sans competition

Very pretty indeed.

Stopped by the beer museum, which was more the Belgium Beer Guild PR video but you get a beer at the end of the "tour".

Next we did a real tour of the Lambic Cantilion Brewery where they brew with wild yeast.  Very cool, here Daniel is playing tour guide for us, the tour is self guided. They still use the 100+ equipment the company was founded with.

Beer in Casks!

Beer in bottles!

At the end of this tour we got some Lambic beers, soo pretty.

At this point it was time for lunch, Belgiun waffles for lunch, there were also some frites sadly not photographed.

Post lunch was followed by more beer.  The Ala Mort Subite bar still has it's original 1920's decore and some delicious micro brew Lambics. This one is a peach.

And of course I had to try the raspberry.

Now it wasn't all beers, I did stop by this lovely "mall" and bought some chocolates.

Ta Da ... truth be told there were five different chocolate shop stops.  In my defense there are about three chocolate shops on every street block, the idea you could just go into one is ridiculous. What if you accidentally went into the worse chocolate shop on Brussels, what a waste of a trip, nope best to get two chocolates at a couple of stores and compare. 

Before dinner we stopped off for another beer. Daniel sought out a bar serving Kwak just so he could order the special glass holder.  There are almost as many bars as chocolate shops ... but not quite.

Daniel talked me into hitting up the casino in town for a hour later that night.  I did not beer there I think I had successfully reached my beer quota for the day.  The casino wasn't bad, it sure wasn't Vegas but it wasn't the middle of Missouri either.  Interesting to watch a black jack dealer work a game simultaneously in both french and english.  Sadly we didn't make enough winnings to pay for the trip, maybe next time.

On to Amsterdam and a house boat!!! 

Film en Plein air avec des amis

(Outdoor film with friends)

Paris doesn't really recognize summer starting until the end of July so I was excited to get a see one of the free outdoors movies before we left.  It had been raining all day so we were a little worried especially since we had invited a few people to join us ... that's right we have people to invite.  Ben joined us and I invited Jenny, from Chicago, we meet during the macaron class.  

We showed up around 8:20 to picnic before "Gran Torino" started and were planning on renting chairs.  Chairs would be for rent at 8:30 so Jenny sat on a small bath towel while down sat on a plastic bag, we were looking pretty sad.  At 9 they finally let us rent chairs though no promise that a movie would actually be shown.  A nice bonus was our chairs came with giant blankets, our picnic was saved from our sad towel.

  

Jenny and I under the lawn chair blanket lean to Ben and Daniel constructed. 

It started to rain just a little bit but we decided to stick it out and open another bottle of wine. Luckily it only sprinkled for about 20 minutes and the weather behaved for the rest of the night.  We had a ridiculous amount of food that everyone brought which was great though we did run a little short on wine, so Jenny and I ran to a store for more.  I really enjoyed getting to spend some girl time, Daniel and I have been spending a lot of time together.

Movie screen is inflated! Tom, a fellow american and friend of Ben's, is in the foreground.

So this would be a picture of our food and wine, apparently trying to take a picture sans flash at 11 outside doesn't work so well.  Ben would be the white blur. 

In getting more wine we also bought some chocolate bars to accompany Ben's oreo for dessert.

Aren't we cute.

Despite renting the five chairs we spent most our our time lounging on the blankets which were the real saving grace to our picnic.  The five of us had a great time before and during and had to be shooed off the lawn after the film finished.  It was our second to last night in Paris and spending it with our summer friends was a really nice way to wrap up an amazing trip.

Faire de Veló dans la Campagne

(Biking in the Country)

We enjoyed our last bike tour so much we decided to do another on. This time we did a day trip out to Giverney and Monet's House and famous water lilies.  

Kit in the Red shirt

Our tour guide Kit was much more of an art history buff than a bike tour leader, being an artist himself.

Cider Time!

Before we biked out to Monet's home we picnicked in a local park.  What was great about this was for lunch supplies Kit took us to the town square and pointed around saying they are good for bread, they are good for meat, they are good for cheese see you in 45 minutes and sent off all these english speaking tourist to small town markets.  This is what we do most days for lunch so we didn't care but it was interesting to watch a couple of our fellow riders slog through ordering meat from french speaking shop keeps.  I am sure that is what we looked like two months ago.

I look photoshopped into the picnic.

The sun was a little intense so I borrowed Daniel's hat for part of the ride.  We pretty much just rode from the train station to the gardens and back, which was still a nice hour each way.  We were a little slower moving group this time apparently a lot more people are willing to hop on a bike for the first time in a few years in the country than in busy Paris streets.

So truth be told Monet's gardens are as pretty as you have always heard they are.

Us in front of THE Water Lilies. 

Oh and super pretty flowers all over the place.

Je veux vivre ici.  (I wants to live here).

In the picture taking place on the bridge.  

It is not as obvious in the photos but the gardens were slammed with people.  We had to wait for a few minutes for a spot to open up on the bridge and then felt like we only had few minutes before it was someone else's turn. This is one of the only pictures I am not making a stupid face in, stupid light sensitive squinty eyes.

The pond section isn't even part of the backyard gardens.  Forget painting I think Monet missed his calling as a landscaper.

This is what my grandfather's garden would look like if he had a staff and not just my cousions.

It was a bit hot outside so just about about everyone bought a cold beer for the train ride back.  Well just about everyone... I would not suggest this beer... I would really not suggest it luke warm.... just saying.  Kit filled us all in on the Art movements before and after Impressionism on the train ride back, apparently the french still aren't really fans of the Impressionism.  

Yesterday we got up to Musée O'say and L'Orangerie and was neat to see all of the Monet's paintings from his home having just been on the bridge and stood in the same spot over looking the pond.

Thought we are still in need of some more bike riding ... maybe Amsterdam...

Cours de Cuisine

(Cooking Class)

The dessert of choice in Paris might not be what you think, those guessing the eclair are wrong, the chocolate mousse if fine, those thinking the suculent crepe should come around to the crepe as your new favorite lunch accucramont, lord knows I have. The hot dessert in Paris the macaron.  To continue the plan to bring Paris back home with me in my over expanded suitcase I took a macarron class.

I figured after a three hour class at Cooking with Class french cusine school I would be cranking out macarrons like crazy after I got home... oh how wrong I was... but how delicious.

Our Pastry Cheif Briony melting white chocolate. She was great and really friendly, while it was a cooking class there was a lot of just watching her.  Turns out I have been doing almost all of my pastry cooking wrong over the years.  Melting chocolate ... wrong .... melting sugar .... wrong ... making meringue ... wrong.  There were only 5 of us in the class so plenty of chances to see and hope in to help.

This would be a proper Meringue.

Something that is starting to look like macarons.

See mine are almost as good as the chiefs.  Though it turns out ziplock bags with the corner cut out are not the same as pastry bags with tips ... who know?

They look like party favors.

Macaron Television.

We were all served espresso while we were waiting for our macarons to bake. By the way this is the first oven I have used in two months.

We mainly made small ones but Briony made two big cookies so she could show us how to make a show piece out of them.  That would be peach sherbet with fresh strawberries.

That would be delicious, and it was.  

As pretty as a desert as this makes it is not so pretty eating it as we devoured it in a matter of a few minutes.

Gold dusting the white chocolate macarons.

My creations!

We made three flavors Blackberry, White Chocolate Lemon and Salted Buter Carmel.  Fun fact: none of the flavoring is in the shell it is all in your filling.  It is best to make your cookies up a day before you want to eat them so the flavor from the filling melds into the cookie better.

We couldn't wait.  This picture was taken a mere hour after the class.

Luckily everyone got 13 in the class so we ate some and had some more a few days later, the flavor does get more intense but they were still pretty good an hour afterwards as well.  Fun Note: the cookies two days later were much more apparent which batch the chief mixed up and which ones we the students mixed up, all tasty just not as airy.

Looking forward to polishing off the rest of them tonight.  When the chief email us the recipes she also invited us to email her freely when we freely when we fail at home.  Apparently we will fail at home, I will let you know.

Normandy (D-day Trip)

Normandy (D-day trip)

Daniel decided we should make time for a run to Normandy and sort of D-Day appreciation trip.  Normandy is fairly close to Paris and we are near the end of our trip so we decided to get up early and just spend the the one night there.  Normandy is really only accessible by car so we rented a car for the day.  By the way, this would be the first time we have driven since getting here.  

They gave us a Ford ... not even a fun european model.  Oh and almost all the cars are stick shifts so no driving for me.  We later realized later I trusted his ability to not crash the car into something as much as he trusted me to successfully navigate us along.  Final out come we didn't get lost and we didn't wreck the car, a rousing success.

Our first stop was to the Caen Normandy Memorial Museum, the museum outlines everything leading up to WWII, through the war, and then after the war with special exhibit on the D-Day.  We spent over 4 hours there and didn't even make it to the the post WWII wing.  Actually not too many artifacts, much more explanation, film and photos.  It was really fascination and wonderfully informative.

There was an American Garden Waterfall Memorial we visited as part of the Museum.

The bottom of the fall had a plaque from every state and territory of the US in honor of the soliders lost in the war.

We stayed right on Omaha Beach.  It is  a quite beautiful beach but was surprising how long the beach is at low tide and must have been that day.

In the morning we when up to Point du Hoc to see the artillery postion that had to be taken out to protect Utah and Omaha Beach.  They removed all the debris but have left the structures letting nature overtake them again.

If it wasn't for the blown out bunkers it would be a wonderful place to take the family for a picnic.

We waked a bit more of beach.  As I mentioned it is a very wide beach and while it was cold day there were still families playing in the water and building sandcastles.  In addition to the children shivering in their bathing suits we saw a couple of elderly ladies walking the beach with what I assume to be her children remembering a father and a husband.

After the beach we walked the American Cemetery, it was surprisingly vast and seemed to stretch on and on.

While we read some names some stones were just inscribed as "Here rest in Honred Glory a Comrade in Arms Known but to God."   

We also stopped by the wall of the missing.

It was a bit of a somber trip but it felt like trip certainly worth taking.  Made me appreciate the men and women of that time and appreciate the men and women who continue to serve the country.