This is just a preview page. I still haven't put up a page for
the Paris trip or completed the Spain trip yet. By the time I actually finish
any of these no one will be interested in reading them.
During the Spring airfares were quite good to Europe so I decided
to take my daughter Randy to Paris during her spring break. We had a great
time during our week in France. Shortly after we returned, we started talking
about where to go for our Summer Vacation. Sally and Randy like the beach,
so we usually end up in some place like Cancun or Hawaii, but I'm not that
much of a beach person so I decided to look for something a little bit different.
Again the prices to Europe were still low so we decided to go to the Costa
del Sol in southern Spain. Spain was a good compromise since Sally and Randy
could enjoy the beach and I could go visit places inland. So, that was pretty
much it for vacations for this year, but then Alcatel, the company that I
work for, decided to shutdown all US offices for two weeks as a cost cutting
measure. Now, I don't have a lot of vacation time and I certainly don't want
to waste it by sitting at home for two weeks. Sally and I got on the web and
started looking for bargain vacation packages. Basically, we were looking
for any place that looked interesting and wasn't expensive. As it turned out
Europe was still relatively inexpensive so we booked a trip to Belgium.
We chose Belgium because it is central to a lot of places. For
example, it is only a 2 hour train ride from Brussels to either London or
Paris. We decided that we could take a quick look at a number of places and
if we liked some place a lot we could come back later and explore it in more
detail. Sally and I got a good deal on a flight to Brussels and hotel for
a week. The plan was to use Brussels as a base and take day trips to various
cities. We decided to alternate long travel days (Luxembourg, Koln and Amsterdam)
with short travel days (Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp and Brussels). The longest
of the trips was about 3 hours each way. A number of people asked us if we
wasted a lot of time by raveling back and forth to Brussels each day, but
it really wasn't bad. If we had decided to travel to each city we still would
have ended up with the same time to get to each city. Once there we would
have had to take time to check into a hotel and then check out later the next
day. We had the added bonus of not having to schlep our luggage around and
pack and unpack each day. The disadvantage was that we could see the cities
that we visited at night.
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 Several
People have asked me why I put something on my website about the hotel,
but one of the first questions that people ask me after I get back from
a trip is "what was your hotel like?". The difference between
a four star and a two star hotel in the package deal wasn't very much
so Sally and I decided to go for the four star hotel. The hotel turned
out to be much nicer than we expected. The room and a full sized bed,
a sitting chair, table and a small desk with a chair. The bathroom was
very nice and Sally really liked the bathtub. Our room was on the quite
side of the hotel, away from the street, unfortunately, beneath our
window was some ventilation machinery for either our hotel or the building
next to us. The machinery wasn't that loud, but it emitted a high pitched
sound. The first two nights it wasn't that bad, but the third night
it was really bothering me and I finally asked the hotel to change our
room. We lucked out, the hotel didn't have very many rooms left and
ended up moving us to a room that was twice the size of our original
room. The new room had a larger bed, two nice sitting chairs, a sofa
and even a balcony.
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 We
left L.A. on Saturday morning and arrived in Brussels on Sunday morning.
We took the train from the airport to a station near our hotel and then
a cab to the hotel. By about noon Sally and I were on our way to explore
Brussels. We bought some metro passes and took the metro to the Grote
Markt. The AAA "Essential Belgium" describes the Grote Markt
"to be one of the most beautiful squares in the world and is an
oasis of light and peace in the heart of the city". We then walked
to St. Michel, on the way stopping at the Galeries St. Hubert. After
St. Michel's we were a bit tired, so we decided to take a bus tour around
Brussels. On the tour we saw the Atomium, a 102m/335ft high model of
an an Iron molecule which was built for the 1958 World Fair and the
Parc du Cinquantenaire with its arc de triomphe. After the bus tour
Sally and I went to the Musees Royaux des Beaux-Art which is a world
class museum. We say several beautiful Sisleys, a Monet, a number Magrittes,
Ensors, Khnopff and Rodin.
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 We
purchased a Benelux train pass which allowed us to take the train anywhere
in Belgium or Luxembourg. It was about a 3 hour train ride to Luxembourg
City. I think that if Luxembourg City had been part of Belgium and not
in a different country we wouldn't have visited it. The guide books
gave it a two star rating and I think its big appeal was that we got
to visit another country. Both Sally and I were extremely happy that
we visited Luxembourg, it was one of our favorite cities on the entire
trip. Luxembourg is very tourist friendly without being annoyingly touristy.
Luxembourg City sits on a plateau so there are many places where you
can look out across a beautiful view of the the city or country side.
The first place we went was the Petrusse Valley which is a large park
in the city that is very pretty and very relaxing. There really aren't
a lot of tourist type sites in Luxembourg but it is a very charming,
beautiful and friendly city. One place where Sally and I spent a lot
of time was the Bock Casemates which is a defensive labyrinth dug in
the sandstone plateau of the city in 1745. We also took a tour of the
Royal place.
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 Bruges
is an extremely well preserved 14C - 15C city with canals and very interesting
old buildings. This city is very highly rated in the tourist guides.
The city was only an hour train ride from Brussels. The day we visited
Bruges the temperature cool and the sky was cloudy with threats of rain.
We had to take a bus from the train station to the town which wasn't
any trouble. The bus let us off near Market Hall. Our first stop was
the Belfry, and 84m/275ft tower built originally in 1493, but replaced
in 1741. Sally and I walked to the top, but since the day was cloudy,
the view at the top wasn't great. When we got down it started to rain
a little bit, fortunately we had brought umbrellas. One of our guide
books had a map of Bruges, but it seemed to be worthless, we couldn't
match up any of the street names. While looking around we saw some sign
posts similar to the ones we had seen in Brussels and Luxembourg which
pointed the way to various sites. When we got close enough to read the
signs we saw that what they pointed out was the directions to various
hotels. After trying to find our way unsuccessfully we stopped at the
tourist information center where we had to purchase a map for 1 euro
(In every other city we got a map free). After we got our map we walked
to one of the main canals. By this time it had stopped raining and Sally
and I decided to take a canal tour before the rain started again. The
canal tour was very good. The boat driver asked everyone what language
they spoke and the gave the tour in all of the requested languages (4
English, Dutch, French and German). We spent a lot of time going through
the old churches and walking the streets. We went to the Groeningemuseum
which was very disappointing because almost all of the exhibits were
closed for renovations. On the way back to Brussels Sally asked me what
I thought of Bruges and I said "I feel like I've been battered
and Bruged". The place was very pretty, but too much of a tourist
trap. If the buildings weren't actually five hundred years old one would
have felt like it was Walt Disney's idea of a medieval city. I'm happy
I visited Bruges, but I probably wouldn't go back
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 Koln
is a 3 hour train ride from Brussels. Our Benelux train pass wouldn't
take us to Koln Germany so we had to buy a ticket for Germany. We decided
to take the high speed train, but it turned out that they are still
working on getting the high speed trains rolling and it really wasn't
much faster than the regular train. Koln is a great city to visit in
a day. Everything is close together and near the train station. The
first thing we did was purchase a WelcomCard at the tourist office by
the train station. The tourist card is a fantastic deal which gives
you access to museums, mass transit and large discounts on a number
of things in the city. We started with the DOM cathedral. The Dom is
Germany's greatest cathedral. It was started in the 13C but wasn't completed
until 1880. The Cathedral as a large number of stained-glass windows
and two massive towers. Sally and I climbed all the way to the top of
the tower. One thing that was very disappointing was all of the graffiti
on the church. Actually graffiti is a big problem all over northern
Europe. I don't think I saw a single flat surface that didn't have graffiti.
Sally and I then went to the Wallraf-Richartz Museum. This was another
world class museum. They had a large number of Caillebotte's, really
the finest collection I've seen. All of the museums in Koln didn't allow
photos, so I only have pictures of the DOM. Next we went to Heinrich-Boll-Platz
museum which house a collection of modern art. After that, we wen to
the Romisch-Germanisches Museum. Koln became a Roman city in 53 A.D.
and the museum houses Roman artifacts from the ancient city. This museum
turned out to be much more interesting than I thought it would be and
we spent a lot of time there. Unfortunately the last train for Brussels
left Koln at 6pm so we had to leave the city early, but Koln rated very
highly on our list of favorite cities.
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 The
tourist guides basically stated that Ghent was a second rate Bruges
- a well preserved 15C city with canals. After our experience at Bruges
I thought about taking Ghent off our list and going somewhere else,
but Ghent is pretty close to Brussels (only a 30 minute train ride)
so I figured if we didn't like it we could easily go somewhere else.
Ghent ended up being much more enjoyable than Bruges. The look of the
city was essentially the same as Bruges, but Ghent is a college town
and doesn't depend on tourism to make it run. We took a canal tour (not
as good as the one in Bruges since the tour taped) and visited a number
of the churches, including St-Baafskathedraal, St-Kiklaaskerk and St.
Michielsburg. We also visited the Belfort, Lakenhalle, Stadhuis and
Grasiei.
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 Surprisingly,
our Benelux train pass took us to Amsterdam which is a 3 hour train
ride from Brussels. We began our trip to Amsterdam with a 1 hour tour
of its famous canals. The architecture of Amsterdam isn't as interesting
as that of Bruges or Ghent, but we did enjoy the canal tour. We then
took a tram to the museum section of town to see the Van Gogh museum.
The Van Gogh Museum has some of the best paintings in the world located
in one of the worst museums that I have ever been in. First, building
is ugly, on par with some of the uglier sections of LACMA. Secondly
the lighting isn't very good. Third, while the museum has some benches
in it, only a couple of them actually face any paintings. The Van Gogh
Museum was the worst museum experience I've ever had. I've been in museums
where people crowd around a particular piece of art such as the Venus
de Milo or the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, but I had never experienced
anything like the Van Gogh museum. Everyone who entered the building
queued up and walked in single file past every painting on the main
floor of the building. Oh, you could try to break out of the queue and
stand an look at a picture for a while, but only if you are tall enough
to look over the heads of all of the people marching past the paintings.
If you venture off of the main floor, things do get better and there
is actually a nice little impressionist section with a lovely Monet
on one of the other floors. I would like to visit this museum at sometime
other than peak tourist session to see if it is any less hateful. Sally
and I walked around the city a bit. We checked out the red light district
and the hash bars which were interesting. One thing that we didn't like
about Amsterdam was that it was very crowded. Neither Sally nor I like
crowds, so we would like to return to this city during the off season.
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 By
Saturday Sally and I were pretty tired. Fortunately Antwerp was only
a 45 minute train ride from Brussels. Antwerp was another city that
we both enjoyed quite a bit. We went to the Grote Markt and saw the
Kathedraal with its 123m/403ft tower. The Cathedral was supposed to
have two towers, but the second one was never completed. We also visited
the Stadhuis - the town hall which was build in 1564. The most fascinating
place we visited was the Rubenshuis. Unlike many artists whose work
were unrecognized in their lifetime, Ruben was a wealthy man at a fairly
young age and build himself a large mansion in Antwerp. The Rubenshuis
was a little expensive, but we liked it. Antwerp reportedly has a very
good zoo and Sally and I considered going to the Zoo, but at this point
in our trip we hadn't purchased any souvenirs to bring back for friends.
Souvenir shopping consisted of buying large quantities of Belgium chocolate
to bring back to friends. By the time we finished shopping it was a
bit late to go to the zoo and we were tired so we headed back to the
hotel.
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