Nelson News UK: December 2006

Brugge, Day Five

After breakfast (just juice for me, thanks) Margo made a trip to get more cash (we found many restaurants, and our hotel, didn't accept cards on the Maestro network like ours) and got me some Immodium at a pharmacy to clear me up. Sarah was feeling lousy and we braced ourselves for a hard day of travel with spiraling crabbiness, but it turned out much better than we feared.

We got some drinks while waiting for a Brussels train at the Brugge station. Then in Brussels Margo picked out some snacks for the Eurostar ride. We also passed this and Margo had to see it working so she bought a fruit smoothie.

Big deal, so a robotic tray fetches your food. You can see Margo doesn't get out much.

On the Eurostar we mostly thwarted crabbiness by spelling words on Sarah's Magna-doodle and using it to play Hangman.

Cabbing back to the Liverpool Street station, we had a few spare minutes to catch the 17:00 to Norwich, which may be the fastest train to Ipswich of the day because there are no stops before Ipswich. And I was pleased to have the appetite for solid food again, getting a sandwich from the deli car. Then it was great to be home again, more so once we got the heat going.

Brugge, Day Four

Boxing Day. Also a great day to go shopping, which is what we did after breakfast. I had the first shift. I found my Hooverphonic CDs pretty quickly, as well as some other used ones at good prices. I looked at clothes but didn't buy anything. Then Margo and Sarah went out and came back with a few pieces of new clothing for Sarah.

I'd skipped lunch and I noticed by late afternoon I was feeling a little queasy. I thought getting some dinner in me would take care of it but it only made things worse, and before I knew it I had graphic evidence of a digestive dysfunction. Margo and Sarah had started the trip with mild colds and Sarah's grew worse so as the day ended we were an increasingly miserable bunch.

Brugge, Day Three

Christmas Day. We slept as late as we could and had breakfast downstairs. Afterward I went out for some longer walks with the camera.

Brugge was the 2002 European Capital of Culture (I think Liverpool gets the nod in 2007) and this was built for it atop the foundations of a historic building.

The canal that rings/spirals the town centre used to be a moat, and there used to be a wall around the city with several gates like these for access.

There are four windmills spread across one of the canal banks.

Walking by this building, I admired the diversity of the owner's renovations. It's similar to the way terraced flats in the UK will vary by paint and roofing tiles, even though it's all one building, but this even varies by window and door styling.

A statue of the painter Jan van Eyck where the canal spiral terminates.

And here we are back in the central square. This side of the square consists of restaurants that mostly cater to tourists.

On another walk in a different direction I found shopping streets with less-touristy shopping (clothes, electronics, music, food), all closed of course. I found this plaza; on the right is an arts centre.

Here's a closer picture of the plaza's fountain. Bikes and nude women - how could I not take a photo?

Serious commuter bikes. I thought my last bike was cool, but look at these brakes in the hubs. The rear-wheel locks are beefier (I think they're sufficient security - I don't remember seeing a single Kryptonite lock around town). And I like how the front light is better integrated with the fork.

Before dinner I took Sarah skating. Margo met us there and got these pictures.

Here's that row of restaurants again, lit up at night. We ended up having our Christmas dinner in one of them.

Brugge, Day Two

Our room included breakfast, so we started our first morning in Brugge downstairs. We served ourselves from selections of coffee, juices, cheeses, sliced meats, croissants and rolls, yogurt and fruit. Afterward we headed back to the Christmas village.

We saw some horse-drawn carriages offering tours and, on a whim, decided to hire one. We got a half-hour tour of central city highlights. Brugge's centre is formed by a canal that doesn't so much ring the city as spiral into it.

After the tour, we found one of the nearby streets we'd gone down earlier because it had some shops we were interested in. We started in a chocolatier, getting a box of a variety of smaller chocolates, plus a chocolate Santa for Sarah. A music store had Hooverphonic's new collection of singles, but I held off since I had half of them already. Their first three albums are available easily, but not their more recent ones, which were my true target. Margo had her eye on lace, and ended up buying a tablecloth with a heart-of-Brugge pattern.

We explored some other shopping streets. One square featured some kids' rides, and what cold-hearted brute would deny our little one such a small pleasure on Christmas? Me, that's who, but Margo was there, so we sprung for a ride.

Being Christmas Eve, we anticipated many restaurants being closed for the day as well as the next, so we went to a deli and stocked up. Margo picked some sausages and cheeses whilst an assistant plied me with locally produced spirits. We ended up taking home a bottle of Jenever, a corn-based drink similar to whisky, as well as a flavoured version supplemented with hazelnut and cream. I also picked five bottles of local ales including "Brugse Zot" (which the assistant told me meant something like "crazy man") which is made in a brewery a few blocks away.

Then it was back to our room to relax a bit. We were pleased to see we could get BBC 1 and 2 so I wouldn't miss the highly-anticipated Doctor Who Christmas special later that evening. We had dinner in a nearby brasserie then retired for an evening of the Doctor and, much later, the Little Britain special. Christmastime is a great time for telly in the UK.

Brugge, Day One

Merry Christmas to all of our readers. We've just returned from our holiday in Brugge, Belgium. That's right. Brugge. Haven't heard of it? Well, it's not as well known as Brussels or Antwerp but Margo suggested it because it's a pleasant town with a nice Christmas village and has something of a reputation as a hidden gem. And Belgium was attractive for several reasons: Belgian beer, Belgian chocolates, and Hooverphonic. It's also low-hanging fruit: it's an easy trip from London by Eurostar train.

Our trip started Saturday morning with a cab ride to the station and a train ride to London Liverpool Street station, where we then took a cab across the Thames to the Waterloo station and its Eurostar terminal. Being a popular holiday travel time, the terminal was quite busy with an impressive queue for customs and boarding but despite this our train left only about ten minutes after its scheduled departure.

It was about two hours to Brussels. We got help to find a train that stopped in Brugge; apparently it wasn't the last stop for any trains, which is how they are listed. The signage was mostly non-English; Dutch and French are the primary languages, but everyone seems to speak English anyway so we were able to get help. We also tried to get Euros from a cash machine but we only found one and it wasn't working.

About an hour later we arrived in Brugge after passing through Ghent. Our taxi driver had to find a cash machine for us on the way to the hotel so we could pay him. We were pleased to find our room; it was much larger than many rooms we've stayed in, with creaky hardwood floors and a huge bathroom.

After a bit of settling and unpacking, we went out to hunt for dinner and ended up settling to eat at the restaurant downstairs. I had onion soup and a "Fish Dish" of salmon and two white fishes baked in a white wine cream sauce. Margo had a salad with warm goat cheese wrapped in bacon, and steak. We also got the famous fries with dinner. Fries are common in Belgium, often served with mayonnaise.

And the beers! Leffe (both the blonde and bruin) are favourites of mine here in the UK already, so I tried a few others with dinner. I started with a Rochefort Trappiste 8° - a small token of moderation from the heavier 10°. It was splendid. Then I had two different tripels. I probably only needed one. The Rochefort was a knockout 9.2% alcohol by volume and I'd guess the tripels were similar if not higher. Portland has an esteemed international reputation for its great beers, many featuring the excellent Cascade hops ... but as a result many of the beers are quite hoppy, whereas I love the sweet, strong maltiness of Belgian beers. I've heard that the Belgians appreciate their beer like the French do their wine.

After dinner we walked the two blocks down the street to the central square housing the Christmas village: a collection of stalls surrounding an ice rink, all dotted with white lights. We got some hot cocoa for Sarah and some "Gluhwien" spiced wine for ourselves and watched the ice skaters while an ABBA medley played, followed by medleys of songs by the Beatles and Grease.

Christmas on Oxford Street

Last night I wandered a bit after work and walked from the Oxford Street Circus Tube station to Tottenham Court Road. It was very busy.

The Tooth Is Out There

This morning Sarah woke up with a tooth missing. Exactly when and how it was removed is unknown but the hideous nature of its extraction from her gums is too frightening to contemplate. The tooth was located nearby in her bedroom. Strangely, despite the ghoulish nature of this occurrence, Sarah seems to be delighted at the tooth's removal, citing the potential financial reimbursement from a mysterious figure.

Christmas Portraits

Like last year, this year we took our own self-portraits for Christmas. We didn't pick one, but instead picked our favourites from the bunch.

If you'd like to get a higher-resolution copy of any of these pictures, just email us.

My Day In London

Today I brought our camera with me to get some pictures of the area of London where I work. I was hoping for better weather - the forecast wasn't for rain today - but it rained anyway.

Here's the Ipswich station as the 5:53 to London pulls in. It's Friday; on any other weekday there are more people and they're dressed even nicer. The train has about ten cars.

The seats fill pretty quickly. On my way in, there are four stops, and it seems all the seats are taken by the third stop. People also stand between trains. At this time of year, it's dark when I go to work, and it's dark when I come home. The only daylight I see is when I go out for lunch. Sometimes I feel like a vampire.

The inside of Liverpool Street Station. All trains from the east of England (East Anglia) end up here. Again, this is Friday; it's usually busier than this. I like the big reader board. Those characters aren't digital; they're little two-piece (top and bottom) signboards, and it's neat to watch them flip when a column changes.

(And this starts the pictures I took over lunch.) This is taken from Exchange Square looking over the top of Liverpool Street Station. Two of London's signature buildings, Swiss Reinsurance ("the Gherkin") and Tower 42, are in the skyline behind.

When I walk to my office from the station, I have two routes. One is through Exchange Square, pictured here.

But usually I take this other, more diagonal route through two plazas. Here's the first of the two, taken at night. There's a ring of shops around the ice rink also.

This is the second one. The glass bit on the right is the entrance to an underground restaurant. Notice those gridlines?

At night they're lit up. There must be a bunch of LEDs under each segment because they can change colour and intensity very slowly. Sometimes the lights chase around in patterns, but usually they just fade from one colour to another.

And at the corner connecting the two plazas is this. Perhaps London's tiniest office tower. I wonder what the story behind this is. Who said, "Hmmm, we should put a little something here ... why not a real building? But not too big of course."

Seeing all these swanky buildings, you might think my office is quite posh also, but it's not.

In fact, it won't even exist in a few months. It's slated for demolition in March. There's a lot of construction happening in London, and with the real estate as high as it is, even moderately old (but not too old) buildings like this are candidates for quick replacement. I don't think I've ever worked somewhere where we knew our building's demise was imminent. I heard our new location might be just across the street.

This is Finsbury Park, which is just behind our building. I hear there's music played there in the summer. This is also bordering Moorgate Road, the nearest Underground station.

And that's my work area. I've done a bit of strolling toward Old Street, toward the Bank of England, and I can walk to the far side of London Bridge in half an hour from my building, but I've got lots more exploring to do.

Chip and Pin

I got my own bankcard a few weeks ago and forgot to write about it until tonight. It took a few weeks to get Margo's bank account converted to a joint account and get my card sent to the proper location.

Bankcards here have chips in them. Whenever you use them, you enter a 4-digit PIN, which is immediately verified because it's on the card. The reason I wanted to write about this is that this system has two neat advantages. One is that, if you lose your card, it's a little harder for a thief to use it. The other is that, whenever you use it at a merchant's, they put the card into a handheld reader (often a wireless one), hand it to you so you can enter your PIN, then take out the card as it prints your receipt. The thing is, it never leaves your sight. Even in a restaurant, the waitperson comes to your table with a wireless reader, processes your card right there, and hands it back. It's one less opportunity for fraud and I like it.