August 23, 2010
Our previous Newsletter did not quite finish the trip. Here is the rest of it.
ZEEBRUGGE, BELGIUM AND THE CHOCOLATE MUSEUM
This was the 21st of July, a national holiday that celebrates Belgian independence from Spain. Our tour was to Flanders and the city of Bruges, where Flemish is spoken. During World War II, this part of Belgium was occupied by the Nazis and when the German retreat began the commander was ordered to destroy the city. Fortunately, being a student of history and having lived in the city, he refused to do it, and so the medieval fabric of the city was saved.
We were set down in the city just inside the old city wall—still marked by a moat. From there we walked to the Market Square, where a surprising number of buildings date from the early 16th or 17th century. Many have their dates inscribed on their facades, and the buildings not so inscribed are often in the same red brick style. Because of the holiday, chairs and a reviewing stands were set up in the square and most of the shops and restaurants were closed. Horses and carriages were lined up and did a steady business carrying holiday-makers through the narrow streets. Drivers sat on elevated seats, with whips and “guard” dogs by their sides.
We walked through and around this activity to reach the narrow streets in the area of the Chocolate Museum. Standing by the nearby river was a statue of Jan Van Eyck, the 15th century Flemish painter, who lived in the city and is buried in the Cathedral. We might have tried to find out if there were any of his paintings to be seen nearby, but our tour was focused on Belgian chocolate, and when our turn came for the Chocolate Museum, we took it and were ushered into an old wine warehouse that had been converted into a museum. We began with group seating for a lecture and demonstration on the art of chocolate making, delivered by a very earnest young man who was clearly devoted to his profession. He began with the different qualities of cacao beans from all over the world and the important characteristics of hand-made chocolates. He filled molds with various dark, milk, and white concoctions, some delivered straight and some with various fillings. His lecture stopped many times while samples of what he was discussing were carefully passed around the lecture hall, so that each listener got a sample of each product.
After the lecture we passed into the sales hall, which was ornamented with a variety of chocolate sculptures of religious and mundane subjects. Of course we bought a tin that replicated the outside of the museum and filled it with two or three kind of chocolate. Then we left, pausing only take a photograph of the life-size chocolate statue of President Obama, complete with a smile and white chocolate teeth.
Monique, our guide, then led us to Walplein, a tourist area where the shops and restaurants were open despite the holiday. We looked at lace tablecloths, but decided the prices were too high, so sat down at a shaded outdoor café for Belgian waffles with strawberries and cream. We had bit of a walk to get past the city wall and moat again to meet our bus, returned to the ship, dressed for our last formal night, and arranged for pictures with our friends.
LONDON AND HOME
On the next day, docked at Gravesend (England), we went in to Tilsbury to arrange for a taxi to pick us up and carry us and our luggage into London, where we had booked two days at the May Fair Radisson Hotel.
Our trip ended with two days in London, where again we walked almost everywhere. We revisited the Buckingham Palace Queen's Gallery Museum; the display this summer had to do with Victoria and Albert: their marriage, family, houses and art. That evening we saw David Suchet and Zoe Wanamaker in Arthur Miller's “All My Sons” in Soho. We had hoped to visit Windsor Castle on our only full day in the city, but the train schedules and the opening hours refused to mesh, so instead we saw a matinee of As You Like It. The production is part of the Old Vic's Bridge Project which unites American and British actors in repertory productions of the play we saw with evening showings of The Tempest. The plays are directed by Sam Mendes and the Old Vic is under the artistic supervision of Kevin Spacey.
Very early in the morning we were transported to Heathrow, and after a pleasant flight, we arrived in Detroit, where we were met by Suzanne, Aidan and Eliza.
AFTERTHOUGHT--THE PRINSENDAM AND THE QE2
Throughout the trip, we were making mental comparisons between the ship we were on and the only other ship we have ever sailed on—the Queen Elizabeth 2. The physical comparisons are obvious; QE2 is 1/3 longer and nearly twice as heavy. She can travel 30% faster, carry more than twice as many passengers, and has more than double the number of crew. The Prinsendam's big advantage is her small size. She can go into estuaries and canals bigger ships must avoid. Thus we were able to transit the Kiel Canal, go up the Gironde Estuary to Bordeaux, and make a first cruise ship stop at Vlissingen. The Prinsendam's other strength is her Indonesian crew. They are a small group, and seem to be overworked. We would see our waiter, Greg, at all hours of the day in several different settings. He seemed to work from dawn to dark, and in northern climes that is a very long summer day. Even with that grueling schedule, he was uniformly cheerful and helpful, as were our cabin stewards, Yusef and Syamsi. The trade offs for the small size come in passenger amenities; the food is average and the entertainment below average. The library, though large in size because combined with the computer room, does not have an extensive collection. The movie theater is very small and combined with a demonstration kitchen. As we observed, if we had not been going ashore nearly every day to see some place we had never seen before, we would have been bored on board. The eating arrangement forced us to choose between the “early bird special” at 5:30 or the Continental late dining at 8. We chose the latter, but longed for the more flexible 7 to 9 dinner we had enjoyed on the other ship. After all the comparisons are made, we decided that the flexible itinerary made the trip worthwhile, but we could still be justifiably nostalgic for our favorite ship, the QE2.
