Tag Archives: food

Lucerne

Posted on by
Reply

Lucerne, (Luzern), is a small town in Switzerland just an hour south-east of Zurich. I visited here in 1995 when doing the 70 day, ‘Grand Tour of Europe’ with Big Sal, Bloody Mary and the adorable Slapper. We didn’t have a lot of time here back then, but I remembered it as a really pretty old market town and was keen to see some more of the place.

The Old Town (Altstadt) has a nearly 1km long Musegg Wall which is part of the old 14thC ramparts. Mr K was immediately excited and exclaimed that he hasn’t seen a real castle before – which took me by by surprise, but when I think back on the travels we have done together, there’s been plenty of palaces, but not many medieval castles. Only one we could come up with was Blarney Castle near Cork – and that’s more a crumbly than a castle, so we will have to fix that in a future trip to Scotland or somewhere equally overrun by castles.

The famous Lion Monument of Lucerne, (Löwendenkmal), was our first port of call on the way into town this afternoon… I wanted to see if in the afternoon light as the morning was a bit ‘meh’, from (my admittedly fuzzy) memory. The dying lion that is sculpted into the rock face of the cliff that overlooks the little town, and was made to commemorate the Swiss guardsmen who died in 1792 during the French Revolution. It’s a beautiful and evocative monument… though slightly less moving when surrounded by 30 or so Chinese tourists all angling for the best selfie!

The Altstadt is right in the centre of town, and full of beautiful old buildings painted in a charming, and very Swiss, style. Just wandering around town is full of beautiful old buildings that mostly house modern shops or restaurants and cafes in them, and accomodations above.

This clock tower chimed the hours and thankfully, (after Bruges!), didn’t have a full on carillon playing a five minute rendition of, ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ several times a day!

The gorgeous Chapel Bridge, (Kappelbrücke), was originally built in 1333 and links the Aldstadt to the Reuss River… like Australians can even get their heads around a wooden structure build by people from 700 years ago! Several sections of it have burned down over the years, but they have always rebuilt it – it is a unique bridge and is truly such a strong symbol of the town, I’m glad they have kept it. At home it probably wouldn’t have been replaced with a concrete monstrosity with steel girders looking like dropped Pick-Up-Stiks!

The construction of it is even beautiful… as are the artworks that have remained in tact. Unfortunately, many paintings were lost during the various fires, but some remain.

Just a stunning even for a stroll through such a quaint medieval town.

Yes, I couldn’t help myself and took way too many photos… the one below is our version of a selfie: you can see our shadows on the ironwork of the bridge we were standing on.

Lining the river near the bridges are a long row of old hotels that have fantastic local restaurants in the basements ands hotel rooms above them… this is where you find our exactly how expansive Switzerland is as a tourist. Even though this is a small town, it has LOADS of accommodation options, but staying in one of these hotels facing the bridge can set you back around $600-800 a night – and we aren’t looking at high season pricing! And for that price, most of these hotel rooms don’t include breakfast, are not air conditioned and might not even have a lift to get you to the higher floors!

Hotel Schiff is a hotel I decided was definitely *not* in our budget, but they have an excellent restaurant, so we thought we’d go check it out for our first Swiss dinner.

The staff were friendly, and didn’t even seem to mind my mangled attempts to order in German. We did manage to get a recommendation for a local beer for Mr K – the Eichhof Kloster, which is some sort of unfiltered pale ale. He was so fond of it, we had to go find some in a local bottle shop the next day.

Dinner was a hearty (read: stodgy) affair of meat a pot-ay-toes! I went for the beef cheek, (Sorry, Slapper, I know you hate tertiary cuts!), and it was super tender and delicious.

Mr K opted for some pork meatballs, also served with a huge serve of mashed potatoes. I loved that he crockery, cutlery and glassware in the place didn’t seem to match, and we had little blankets and braziers even though we were undercover.

Thanks to indulging in a few glasses of rosé and possibly one beer too many, dessert sounded like a good plan tonight and we tried some apple fritters. These were super tasty – but also super sweet, so Mr K got to finish most of it.

Next morning – we woke up to a simply gorgeous day! Unexpectedly so – the weather forecasts had told us it would be miserable and we were nonplussed by that, as we were checking out transport for most of the day…. Lucerne, though it is a small and compact town, has an extensive public transport network which was why we were here.

We took a walk along the river and across the small section of medieval bridge, similar in design to the Chapel Bridge that is close to a really cool little hydro plant, in order to get to the main train station.

This small section of bridge has more of the old paintings in the rafters…

There are massive beams in the construction – I assume they are oak, but that’s just a guess.

The hydro system – more towns should put these in their rivers.

Such a pretty town. Love it!

We spent most of the day with work stuff around trains and the mass moving of passengers – Lucerne does their tourist thing really well, we were impressed. In the evening decided to ferret out a raclette or fondue dinner somewhere… now, I’m all about the cheesy goodness, but not super fond of the fact it’s usually served with bread, bread and bread, or potatoes, potatoes and potatoes … or sometimes loads of bread and potatoes.

So, we did a bit of research and found the highly rated, Fondu House du Pont! Booked a table and got ready for a rich, but hopefully not too bread and potato-y fondue.

Such a cute little spot by the river.

Booking a table gained us the best seat in the house and we had to suffer with this marvellous view for the duration of our meal! Blue skies, mountains, old buildings… gorgeous altogether!

Our five minutes of research paid off – there was indeed a cheese fondue on the menu that could be ordered with yummy meat sides. The fondue was called a Moitié Moitié, and was made with Gruyère, and Michael Tell Alp organic cheese and a splash of garlic, and we were able to order it with a serve each of sliced chicken breast and sliced beef.

The claim on their website it’s that it is ‘The Best in Town!’, and while we have nothing to compare it to – it was fantastic. 10/10 would do again. The service was excellent, the wine list was extensive and reasonably priced and the fondue was really, really good.

So much gooey, stringey cheese! I am we looked like complete savages trying to tame the cheese, but didn’t care – it was delicious!

Back towards the town after a long day of work and a yummy evening of fondue… this town is so pretty.

I did make the mistake of looking up Lauterbrunnen though… we are supposed to be taking the cog railway, (yes, more trains!) up to Jungfrau one day this week – but bloody hell! Maximum temperatures of MINUS 19°C or 20°C that feels like MINUS 34°C… I think this may be taking Mr K’s enthusiasm for transport way too Farr

Screenshot

And scary room chicken* agrees with me!

  • We stayed at the Magic Lantern Hotel and had a room called, “The Farmer”. The hotel has all these weird themed rooms… it was covered in chickens in a most disconcerting manner! In hindsight… maybe we should have shelled out for a Pirate Room; no pesky chickens!

Still in Bruges

Posted on by
Reply

Today was mostly work, but we did find time to pop out for some breakfast – I had a waffle and realised I have never had one before. Not in a restaurant, not on a cruise ship, not at home… it was ridiculously sweet.

There are loads of waffle houses here, so you can pick and choose by Google ratings which one you want to visit.

Sweet and savoury offerings at this place.

After breakfast we went back to the hotel and worked until about 4pm when we went out to find a drink by the canal and watch the world go by. We ended up at Jan Van Eyck Square in a tapas bar? Ok.

There’s some cool civic art in these old cities and then some weird civic art in these old cities.

The Bruges Belfry that was built in the 13thC is 83m tall and is one of the three iconic towers of Bruges, (this and the Church of Our Lady and the St Salvator’s Catheral). There are 366 steps to climb to the top to see the famous views of the city. At the top, there is an enormous impressive music roller that controls the carillon, and a lower room where there is a keyboard which the carillon bells are played with now – since we got here, I’ve been wondering who I write to, to ask them to stop playing ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ on the damn bells! Seems such a weird fucking choice, but it here it is, every hour on the hour.

Mr K went for the walk up the top to check out the view for me… no way my knee is having any part of this.

On the way up, is the city’s schatzkammer – or the imperial treasury. Here is where the city hallmarks, the city seal and the city treasury were kept in the Middle Ages… in a teeny tiny coffer, they’d have us believe.

The views look amazing.

The carillon mechanisms.

Back on the ground, we went to find a place for dinner and ended up at a Flemish restaurant (after vaguely toying with the idea of going for sushi, lol) called Vlaminck.

The food was delicious. Beef carpaccio, cheese croquettes, the obligatory frites and the Flemish stew was the best one we have tried.

In Bruges

Posted on by
Reply

I slept like a dead thing last night – was much needed and much appreciated. Work travel is all good and well, but when the work back home (or in this case, in the Middle East) keeps going and you’re on even more unusual time zones that you’re accustomed to, it just creates different challenges.

We were up early hoping to see a few things in the morning so we could be back to work this afternoon. First up was the obligatory canal boat ride, to see a bit of the city from the waterways. Apparently 8 million people visited Bruges last year and it sounds like nearly all of them did the short boat trip on the canal which takes little over 30 minutes.

What a glorious day! Saint John Nepomuk, patron saint of boatmen, bridges, priests and all men who have something in common on the water.

Gruuthuse Palace named for the wealthiest family in Bruges in the 15thC.

The Djiver Marketplace, where markets are held every weekend in the summer.

This is the Spiegelrei (Mirror Quay) and it sits just opposite the Jan Van Eyck square with its statue (c.1878), and the “Poorterloge” with its tower.

Pelikaan (N°8) is a pediment house which features a pelican feeding its children with its own blood. It is the symbol of charity and these houses were created as social housing in the 15thC – they are still social housing, even though tiny houses along those canals are worth upwards of €800k.

The Church of Our Lady dominates the skyline on this side of town – it’s a beautiful building.

Palais du Franc is a former law court, now turned museum… like most of the beautiful old buildings in Bruges.

So the building below is the one that Colin Farrel jumped out of in the movie, ‘In Bruges’, which is part of the same hotel we are staying it… you can see our hotel window in this picture – it is the left window of the two with the white painted frames, just to the right of the shot. It’s a great little spot, with fantastic restaurants just downstairs, music and a great ambiance all round. It’s always nice to choose somewhere to stay and it turns out nicer than you had even hoped.

Every visitor to Bruges seems to come to this little point beside the canal for a now Insta-famous selfie spot.

Gabled rooflines were used as a symbol of seigneurial housing, and became the fashion of the powerful bourgeoisie of the free market towns.

Bricked in windows were also evident along the canals – for those who don’t know, many European countries established a window tax, as a way of taxing the rich, and for some people, they took to bricking up their windows to minimise their tax burden on their windows. It sounds ludicrous, but it’s true. It’s also where the term ‘daylight robbery’ comes from.

Tanner’s House.

Bruges’ swan population have been seen as a symbol of the city’s power and wealth since the 16thC.

After our short boat ride, we made our way to the Church to see the Madonna.

Bruge’s ‘Church of Our Lady’ is a Roman Catholic church dating mainly to the 13th to 15th centuries. It has a 115m tower that remains the tallest structure in Bruges and is apparently the third tallest brickwork* tower in the world (after two in Germany)… *not to be confused with stone work edifices.

The construction of the church is in a high gothic style with flying buttresses, which were constructed in 1270-1280. It has an impressive black and white marble floor throughout and several baroque style chapels emanating from the main nave.

Our Lady of Perpetual Succour.
Philippe Bernaerdt, 1660. Bruges. Oil on canvas.

Confessionals. Jacob Berger and Ludo Hagheman. 1697. Oak.
This heavily ornate row of baroque confessionals is considered one of the most beautiful example of its kind in existence. The figures represent numerous saints – St Jerome, St Augustine, Faith, St John, St Catharine of Alexandria, as well as the Virgin and Child and St Anne and St Peter.

De Baenst Chapel… named after the a prominent Bruges family.

Passion triptych, Bernard of Orley and Marcus Gerards, c1534. Oil on panel.
Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy died at Nancy in 1477 and was finally laid to rest here in 1563. This painting was commissioned by his granddaughter, Margaret of Austria for the tomb of her own husband, Philibert II Duke of Savoy. Unfortunately the artist, Orley died before he could complete it and it was instead finished by Marcus Gerards the Elder and was later transferred to this chancel for Charles the Bold. It depicts the crucifixion, and side panels featuring the flagellation, the Way of the Cross, the Harrowing of Hell and the Lamentation. Waste not, want not, I guess.

Blessed Sacrament Chapel, Jean-Baptiste de Bethune. C.1863
*Interestingly, Bethune was the nephew of the then Bishop of the church and scored the job of decorating the sacristy from sheer nepotism. He created this entire space in the English style complete with murals and stained glass. They must have been happy with his work as he scored commissions for two more chapels of stained glass after this one.

Tomb of Mary of Burgundy, createdby Jan Borman and Reiner van Thienen. Gilded and enamelled by Pierre de Beckere. 1490-1502, Bruges.
Mary of Burgundy died after falling from her horse on 27 March, 1482 at the Prinsenhof (Ducal Palace) in Bruges. She was only 25 years old, but had ruled the Low Countries since the death of her father, Charles the Bold in 1477. She specifically requested to be buried in the Church of Our Lady. Her husband, Maximilian of Austria, commissioned this tomb in 1490 in a Gothic design. The side panels show her family tree on both her mother’s and father’s side.

While Charles has lions at his feet, his daughter Mary has two rather stunned looking puppies keeping her company in her skirts.

Coats of Arms of the Knights of the Golden Fleece
Pieter Coustain and Jan Hennecart, 1468, Bruges. Oil on panels.
Above the baroque choir stalls are 30 coats of arms of the prestigious Knights of the Golden Fleece. Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy founded the order in 1430 on the occasion of his marriage to Isabella of Portugal.

From 8-10th of May 1468, the order held its meeting in this church and Charles the Bold presided over that meeting. Usually, a member of the order was retained for life, but could be expelled for failure to adhere to the rules of the order. Charles the Bold’s nephew, John of Burgundy was at one point, expelled. His coat of arms were painted black and removed from the choir stalls – the reason for his expulsion was said to be heresy and straying from the faith.

Tomb of Charles the Bold.
Worked by Jacques Jonghelinck (c.1558-1562), Bruges.
While the design of this tomb is extremely similar to that of his daughter’s, it was made nearly 70 years later and shows many signs of typical the Renaissance style – the style of his armour etc.

I can’t get over the detail on his garments – the textures applied that represent heavily embroidered clothing suitable for the noble classes and the expensive fabrics they favoured.

I found these two beautiful embroideries just outside the chancel that held the tombs of Charles the Bold and Mary of Burgundy – unfortunately there was no information available on them, and the musuem staff didn’t know much about them either. They are definitely Opus Anglicanum in style (the 3/4 figures and the elongated hands are very typical of that time frame) and the stitch work is definitely congruous with that supposition – but that could mean they are works from as early as the 13thC. Surely, they wouldn’t just be hanging on the wall in regular daylight if they were 700 years old…? Perhaps they are a fairly accomplished but more recent reproductions done in that style. Very curious…

This, second object was also similarly convincing.

The Madonna of Bruges is definitely the highlight of this cathedral. Sculpted by Michelangelo between 1501 to 1504, it is said to be one of the rare few items of his work that left Italy during his lifetime. It is in an usual arrangement for this subject matter – normally the Virgin and Child motif show a pious mother cradling and looking down on her child, but here you see Baby Jee standing unsupported and appearing almost ready to wander off. It has the typical early 16thC High Renaissance pyramid composition style frequently seen in works from the late 1400s onwards.

The Madonna has been removed twice from Belgium, after originally having been purchased by two wealthy cloth merchants (Giovanni and Alessandro Moscheroni) for 100 ducats in 1504… once during the French Revolution in 1794 and citizens of Bruges were ordered to ship it and other valuables to Paris. It was returned after Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo in 1815. It was again removed in 1944 during WWII, with the retreat of German soldiers who smuggled it into an Austrian salt mine in Altaussee, where it was found a year later. Seems between this beautiful statue and the Ghent Altarpieces, we are inadvertently doing ‘The Monuments Men’ art tour of the Low Countries. It is stunningly beautiful, and most obviously a huge cut above the other statuary in the church.

Procession of the Brotherhood of Our Lady of the Snows. Anton Claeissens. 1575. Oil on panel.
This painting draws inspiration from the 4thC legend that Mary is said to have caused a miraculous snowfall on Mount Esquiline, one of the Seven Hills of Rome, in the middle of summer. She wanted to indicate that a church should be built for her on that spot, apparently.

This beautiful little random fresco on the actual wall of the church didn’t have any description accompanying it… but I was quite enamoured with the delicate calligraphy and how well preserved the colours were.

Popping back out into the daylight after the somber shuffling inside a cathedral/musuem like this, can often be a bit jarring. Bruges has certainly turned on a beautiful day for us and we wandered around town for a while checking out the architecture and of course, the famous belfry.

Oddly enough, at 83m high and 366 tiny winding steps, I shan’t be climbing it with this fooked knee of mine. All good, just means it stays on my list and I’ll have to come back. Maybe I’ll see if Mr K wants to climb it tomorrow. 🙂

Bruges has more chocolate shops than I have EVER seen in my life. There must be over 50 of them within a 500m radius of our hotel, they are everywhere.

We walked around behind the belfry to hunt for a more out of the way, quite spot for lunch. Everything here is at full on tourist prices, which I don’t mind so much, so long as you’re also able to get something quality for your Euro. We are skipping dinner tonight, so a decent lunch is the plan.

We found a nice cafe called Tompouce – Mr K was exceedingly happy with his large blonde beer that came out in a glass almost as big as his head.

Flemish stew – rich and delicious gravy with slow cooked beef.

Beef meatballs in a tomato sauce with mashed potatoes. There – dinner is done!

After our meal, we wandered around a bit, taking more pics of the architecture and searching out the hidden little nooks and crannies of the back streets. Bruges is super pretty and being a medieval town, it’s a rabbit warren of little treasures around every corner.

Ah, these pics are for Angus – he said he wanted me to bring back Belgian chocolates for him – but tbh, I woudln’t know where to start! I don’t really eat chocolate myself, and there is so many varieties on offer, it’s kinda overwhelming to try and choose something… plus, who asks for a gift from overseas that is 1) perishable, and 2) cost by the 100gms?! Doesn’t he know I have a luggage allowance to consider! 😉

I finally found the perfect chocolate present… though I dare say these aren’t the same quality as the fancy truffles above.

I also stumbled into a tapestry shop, Mille Fleur’s Tapestries, which contained all locally woven products… so many beautiful things in here, though I didn’t allow myself to get too far into the back of the shop where the obviously large and impressive pieces were. Instead, In content myself with a small Cushion Agenda… I found two fabulous designs based on the Bayeaux Tapestry, which of course, Mr K had absolutely no Cushion Opinon on, and so I have bought a couple for our media room at home. There were even Mondrian designs for BigSal, but I resisted… this time.

Keukenhof, Hague and Bergen op Zoom

Posted on by
Reply

Went looking this morning for the famous Intel Hotel Zaandam, which is known for its kooky, colourful architecture. We had a perfect day for it – weather was gorgeous, and is probably going to be the last sunny day we will get for a while. Problem was, the front of this hotel seem rather hard to find. There are plenty of other bright coloured buildings in Zaandam, but not quite the one I was looking for…

Close, but no cigar, I think that is the back of it on the right.

Felt like we were getting closer…

And then disco! Around one more corner and the perfect vantage point for the frontage of the crazy arse Intel Zaandam Hotel… I’d stay here, but it kinda looks unstable; like someone designed it while stoned out of their gourd.

Anyway, after chasing down some crazy architecture and a decent coffee for Mr K, we hit the road towards Keukenhof to chase us some tulip fields. Back in 1993, I went to the Wynyard Tulip Festival in Tasmania, most of the way to Davenport on a day trip from Hobart – and the images I took from that trip were like this one below… long lines of tulips being grown for commercial purposes. Still beautiful, but flowers growing bulk in straight lines on singular colours for harvesting.

My god did I have that wrong – Keukenhof is known as the ‘Garden of Europe’ and I knew that before we got here, but I figured it was one of those self proclamation things that is always exaggerated, yeah?

Turns out that Keukenhof is one of the world’s largest flower gardens and gardeners and flower fanciers literally come from all over the world to see the gorgeous flowers when they are in bloom – which is about now… March to late April before the tulips are all beheaded and the bulbs eventually pulled up.

Most of the rest of this post is going to be just Pretty Flower Porn, so if it’s not your thing – scroll on by, baby.

We walked around into a large communal area in front of one of the cafes, (and I say ‘one of’, because there are several!), to find this weird automated hurti-gurdi organ thing playing, ‘Walk Like An Egyptian’ by the Bangles, but sounding like a Wallace and Gromit intro… and let me tell you, that is a vile ear worm to give to people wandering around a psychedelically bright, hyper stimulated environment filled with colour and packed with people! Yes, I know there are no people in my pictures, but the place was as packed as a Manhattan side walk at a St Patrick’s Day Parade! This noisy thing, can go eat a bag of dicks though!

Anyway, back to the beautiful hues of the flowers. Something, something… preferably with a soundtrack from Alice of Wonderland or something…

https://youtu.be/g0lbfEb8MMk?si=iVzgEPOdxcNuHtIg

I loved these ragged looking yellow tulips… never seen anything like them before. They were so fine and fringey in appearance, they looked more like silk or fabric than living flower petals.

Purple and red – best flower colour combo ever!

It’s about now that we start to get a feeling for how large the park is – it covers an area of 32 hectares and they say that approximately 7 million flower bulbs are planted in the gardens annually. 😮
That’s a LOT of bulbs and bullshit.

So many vibrant colours!

These ones look very cool.. a Van Gogh palette if I’ve ever seen one.

The gardens were opened in 1950 and have approximately 1.5 million visitors a year, which is no small feat considering they are only open this year from March 21st to May 12th, with their usual annual visitors season only last 8 weeks. After that, the gardens are closed as no one wants to come and see bare garden beds. Seems perennials aren’t really their thing here. We didn’t come here specifically at this time of year to see the gardens, it just happened to be on a ‘Things To Do’ in the area, list when I Googled up something to do on our way out of Amsterdam, and we though, ‘Sure, sounds like something different.’. We did however meet a couple on the plane who were beside themselves with excitement because they had always wanted to come to Keukenhof, and they had flown from Australia just to see these gardens. I hope they were here today, as this was the only sunny day we were going to get this week! I’m sure they weren’t disappointed though.

So many gorgeous colours… I took sooo many photos.

Some of these images look surreal, the colour is so punchy and the leaves so vibrant and shiny.

Red and purple… what do we say? We say, ‘yes!’. Always say, ‘yes’, to red and purple flowers.

There were many areas that were planted to look more like wild meadows, with flowers coming up among grasses between the trees – which is something you rarely seen in Australia, unless it is some introduced pest species.

Mr K promised not to do any tip-toeing, and true to his word, here he is squatting amongst the tulips.

Orange is not one of my favourite hues, but these complimented each other beautifully.

There’s been lots of thoughtful planting here. The colour combinations and the layout and design of the garden beds is truly spectacular. Yes, I know that is coming from someone who could kill a mint plant (and should confess, I actually have killed some mint plants), but I can still appreciate the work that goes into a place like this.

I mean, look at that…!

Oddly, I do not like commercial cut flowers, I think they are expensive, unsustainable as an industry and they look lovely, but they just bloody die in your house! But these gorgeous flowers alive and in the dirt, I can really appreciate that – even though I know they’re gonna die soon too, yeah, I know. Weird.

There was some cool stuff in the gift shop by the exit – tulip themed mugs, cheese boards, magnets, key rings, coasters, tea towels, coffee mugs, and fucking tulips smacked on everything, but there was also these cool Bylin Tulip handbags which were made of leather and looked very cool. *Mental note: I need to show them to Humphrey.
https://by-lin.com/product-category/tulip-collection/tulip-handbags/

Anyway, we eventually had to get going and head to The Hague and more beautiful tulip fields lined our drive towards the town.

We were headed to The Hague to visit the Peace Palace. The Peace Palace (Vredespaleis) is an international law building. It houses the International Court of Justice, which is the main judicial body of the United Natinls, and has Arbitration Courts, an Academy of International Law and an enormous law library. Built in 1913, it has been a place of arbitration and international collaboration ever since.

Unfortunately, there were no guided tours available today else we would have been able to go in and see cool stuff like this:

Thanks Wikipedia for showing us what we can’t see today! 😛 And I was sooo looking forward to seeing that vase that is taller than me that was gifted by Russia – bet Putin would like it back now, it’d probably cover his poisons budget for a few months. Instead, we had to content ourselves with a poke through the visitors centre. The entire city of Haag is dedicated to the administration of International Law, but also this is the seat of government in Netherlands.

There were some cool looking objects on display in the visitors centre, but the labeling of most of these cabinets was… not great. I’ll have to do some research on them later.

After our somewhat abortive stop at the Peace Palace, we went to go find some lunch at De Pier in Scheveningen. This whole area looks like it’s trying to be a Greek or Italian beach in the Mediterranean… only it’s in the Netherlands, and this is the North fucking Sea, it’s really cold and bloody windy, and wherever you look out to sea, there are huge container ships and oil tankers seemingly barely 500m off shore! So, not quite as inviting as the huge umbrella resort style beach restaurants in southern Europe!

Still we found a nice spot, called ‘Atlantis’ for lunch… yeah, you don’t see many in-table braziers and throw rugs available in the Mediterranean either.

Lunch consisted of some delicious vintage cheese croquettes, a beef carpaccio pizza for Mr K, and a smoked salmon, Dutch shrimp and smoked eel salad for me. Super fresh and delicious.

So many kids playing on this beach like they’ve never seen sand before… and here was us rugged up in our windproof jackets. We were also the only people trying to stay out of the midday sun – pick the Queenslanders and their habitual skin cancer paranoia! No wonder Europeans come to Australia and get burned to a crisp!

After lunch, we were checking out the Madurodam transport hub before heading to Bergen op Zoom for the night. Most people visit Madurodam for the scale model / little town theme park – but not us… no, no, no. We are visiting it to gawk at transport infrastructure! lol. 😀

Bergen op Zoom is a pretty little place – it reminds me of Dresden, only smaller. The Grote Markt is a medieval town square surrounded by beautiful medieval buildings. The history of Bergen op Zoom is fairly extensive with it having been a major trading town, before becoming a garrison town. It has suffered several major fires which have seen extensive loss of historical records and considerable amount of rebuilding.

I imagine, the

The Markiezenhof gothic palace used to be a residence for local lords and Marquises of Bergen op Zoom.

After checking into one of those decidedly European hotels which has one major front door, but then is a rabbit warren of having overtaken the buildings either side of it, we went down to the square to find a drink and enjoy the evening before finding something for dinner.

Bitterballen, lobster bisque and steak entrecôte for Mr K.

Totally delicious, but was more soup than bisque and definitely more langoustine than lobster.

Back to the hotel in time to finish off some work for the evening!

Aww… Time to go Home

Posted on by
Reply

We left Tatsuta Ryokan around 9:30am – about 11 hours before our expected flight for a two hour drive to Haneda and then another two hour drive to Narita. But knowing what we know now about Japan traffic and how unreliable Google Maps and Sandoro (all GPS units are called Sondra, like bar maids – but I digress) can be, we felt it wisest to just set the whole day aside for the transit.

Which turned out to be largely okay… the weather was glorious as we left the Izu Peninsula and Mt Fuji was my constant friend out the passenger side window. Just stunning with clear blue skies today – these were the best views I have ever had of the mountain in four trips and multiple opportunities for viewings.., and we’re stuck in the car!

Weirdly as I was earlier complaining about Sandora, I was reminded just now of how she unexpectedly said at one point on the drive ‘Warning, there is congestion ahead due to a car on fire!’ Mr K and I just looked at each other and said, ‘Did she just say…?’; ‘Yeah, yeah she did.’ Weird. But sure as eggs ten minutes down the highway, there was a burned out car on the back of a tow truck with several emergency vehicle and personnel around. Sandora can’t seem to tell us how long it will take to get from A to B accurately, but magically she can give us live updates on a burning car on the side of the road.

No I didn’t take a photo of the car wreck.

We noticed this on our way out of Tokyo – all the buildings looked like they were in 8bit due to a type of mesh barrier that is in use along vast sections of the highway. But now we are seeing Mt Fuji in 8bit, we are starting to ask ourselves if Tokyo’s civil engineers got together with various community artist and designed the road furniture this way deliberately to create a cool, and very Japanese style, 8 bit landscape! It’s very cool but also weirdly like looking at the world through one of those halting flick motion books. 🙂

We’ve seen some fun traffic signs on this trip – but I think this one takes the cake. Not only is that a convoluted as fuck depiction of the Shuto Expressway, but it’s live and shows congestion points – no doubt sometimes the entire thing is lit up red like Christmas tree.

We made it back to Haneda to return our rental car around 12:30pm – so as expected the two hour drive was more like three, and decided to try and find some one last fabulous sushi meal before we boarded our sad flight home… Google to the rescue and I found a well located sushi restaurant at Haneda Gardens (a shopping centre across from Haneda Airport’s Terminal 3). The place is called Tsukji Sushiko Takumi.

It was unexpectedly quiet, but perhaps not for midday on a Sunday, so we were pleasantly surprised by that – in no small part, because it feels a bit like every other time I picked a restaurant, we ended up waiting for a table for ages! Mr K had better luck with his eatery choices, though he may not have been heading for the high end of town like I was.

Menus were in English, ordering on an ipad, ad we started with a little salmon, tamago and ikura sushi starter.

Mr K ordered at tempura rice bowl set, and I tried a bit of his eggplant which was delicious.

I ordered the tuna four ways, and OMG if it wasn’t the best damn tuna sashimi I’ve ever had, it was damn close. For a shopping mall restaurant, it was quite ten times better than any sashimi I’ve had in Australia, which is both fabulous, but also sad as.
Definitely saving the details of this place here, in case we find ourselves with time to kill near Haneda at some time in the (hopefully near) future. It was fantastic and cost roughly the same as a weird and disappointing hamburger meal we had a couple of days ago!

We then dropped off our car and met up with our driver – a step that was necessitated by Qantas changing our flight on us. We booked back in April on sale fares, which is the best way to do it if you can. However, at that time QF62 our flight home was operating from Haneda Airport – so we booked to fly in and out of Haneda because that would make the region we needed to travel to more accessible. IE: we didn’t want to have to drive the two hours across Tokyo from Narita. :/ A couple of months ago though, we received notice that all QF62 flights were being moved and would now be coming back from Haneda – turns out today, and our flight, was the first QF62 out of Narita.

So we meet our driver who was thankfully going to expertly manoeuvre us the rest of the way – a solid 1hr 45mins to 2 hrs – across Tokyo as the cost of returning the car to somewhere other than where we picked it up was going to be roughly the same as getting someone to collect us. Plus we figured a professional driver would be way better at driving in Tokyo than we would be, We may have overestimated on that – because instead of taking the Shuto and skirting around the entire city, we found ourselves on some of those inner spokes of this previously displayed nightmare and literally driving on an elevated highway right past Shibuya and Shinjuku! WTF?

But also, comforting to know it’s not just useless foreign tourists who fuck this up!

Anyway, we got to the airport in plenty of time to check in early, and thank goodness for that – seems half the ground staff were in training given the flight was newly moved from Haneda. So there was some unusually be-suited management types trying to train and guide the staff in checking people in.

After that, we sailed through customs and security (yay, express passes) and got to potter around a couple of duty free shops before installing ourselves for a while in the JAL First Class Lounge – which was quite okay actually. Saké on tap, literally and a touch screen to order curry, noodles or sushi. Best things about it – it is the quietest airport lounge I’ve ever been in. The Japanese and their inherent politeness manifesting in doing things like – taking phone calls in private booths designed expressly for this purpose, having conversations in what Westerners would call ‘indoor’ voices, and not having Sky News blaring at you whether you like it or not. Take note Qantas!

Boarding went smoothly and it was out with the bubbles to say good bye to Japan. For now.Last Japanese selfie complete with obligatory cutesy filter. It’s tradition!

Dinner options were pretty good and there was a Japanese set menu on offer, that I was certain was going to be disappointing after my fabulous sushi lunch, but when else am I going to get offered a Japanese meal on a plane?

The starters were in a neat little bento box and consisted of some shrimp, tofu, pickles, vegetables, beans,and all sorts of beautifully presented tasties. I was pleasantly surprised – this was airline food after all – but it’s obviously been prepared by people who care. It was really quite lovely with some crisp saké on the side.

There was also a Main course of Dainomono, seasonal grilled fish (mackerel I was told), served with rice, miso soup, and pickles .

Followed by a desert: wagashi which came with a cup of green tea. Nice job Qantas… I was actually quite impressed with an airline meal; first time in years.

Unfortunately our flight wasn’t as comfortable as it should have been – there was an ungodly glow coming from the ‘no smoking’ sign over our head which was a multiple of lumens brighter than any other ‘no smoking’ sign in the rest of the cabin! I was wearing an eye mask and trying to hide under my pillow and still couldn’t block it out. Also the cabin temperature was too warm… which is weird because we always travel expecting to freeze on flights, but at one point when I got up to use the bathroom at 2am, I walked down the aisle and noticed that nearly everyone had kicked off their blankets, so it wasn’t just me being Goldilocks (for a change!).

Other than that our flight was uneventful, which is just how we like them. Getting through Brisbane Airport was no problem and our cabbie was even super friendly and competent! All up it was a great transit* taking about 22 hours from leaving Izu to walking in the door at home.

Sayonara, Japan – for now.

* One slight hiccough of my own creation … I left my iPad on the plane! I never do things like that. Ever. But the stupid thing has a grey cover, the exact same colour of the side table of the business capsules so I can see how after not enough sleep and feeling a bit fatigued, I totally didn’t notice it. Oh well, thanks to the “find my device” and a bit of Googling to find the international airport’s lost property, I managed to get it back a few hours later – but that did mean driving back to the airport again! I swear our cars know the way tot he airports on autopilot.