Amsterdam, Holland, Belgium and London Day 7 - Cars and Coffee (and Bruges)

Isabelle has an employee cover the bookstore today, so we’re lucky that both Stephan and Isabelle can spend the entire day with us.  We’re treated to another delicious breakfast and head out.  Our first night in Sluis we heard that Stephan’s sister and brother-in-law, Karin and JP, have a repair shop and a significant car collection, too, so that’s our first stop this morning.   The shop is amazing, vintage cars, sports cars, race cars, motorcycles.  JP shows us the cars and tells what makes each one special.  He races and shows us his current track car and the BMW racer he is currently building.  There is more to the collection which is in a warehouse across town and of course I want to see it.  When JP fires up the Aston Martin, his daily driver, I jump into the passenger seat like an excited puppy.  It is after all one of my bucket list cars.  It sounds as good as it looks as we motor along the tight roads through town.  The other half of the collection is just as amazing and includes an Auto Union, a massive Graham Paige V8 Touring Car, a cool Mercedes Limo and even a restored Model T.  This totally unexpected part of our trip is a real treat.  Hugs and kisses and we’re off to Belgium.

Bruges specifically.  It’s only 20 minutes away thanks to the new highway.  Bruges is as beautiful as you’ve heard, and we’re here early enough that the town is just waking up.  The streets leading into the center of the village are lined with shops on the ground floor of three and four story buildings, many from as early as the 14^th century.  It’s raining on and off and Isabelle’s bright orange umbrella adds a nice splash of color to our photos.  We pass the Golden Arches set inside a very old building.  The juxtaposition is fun, and we poke our heads inside to see if the line from Pulp Fiction, our favorite movie, is accurate.  There is it on the menu board – Royal with Cheese.  “Do you know why they call it ROY-AL with Cheese?”

Isabelle and Stephan want to take us on a boat ride through the city’s canals as a way to get familiar with the place, see some highlights and catch a bit of the history.  We enter the boat just off the main square, the square with the clocktower from the 2008 movie.  The boat captain is right out of central casting, with animated facial features and wearing a comically cliché captain’s hat for what is essentially a theme park choo-choo train on water.  He’s a real character who’s done this tour thousands of times, telling the same anecdotes at the same spots on each voyage, adding his own laugh track through the mic after each joke.  The journey lasts about a half hour and really is lovely.

American’s generally know Belgium for two things, and departing the boat launch, we head for the most important of the two.  Beer garden dead ahead.  The selection at the 2be Beer Wall and Bar is staggering, but we skip the myriad of bottles and head back to the 16 taps.  The beer menus with today’s offerings are printed in different languages and hung from bungees from the ceiling.  We each pick a different brew and find a table to settle in to enjoy.  The beers are very different from each other, each good in its own right.  Mandy, who rarely drinks beer, is loving the Kriek Boon, a lambic beer aged in oak barrels with 25% black cherries added after 6 months.  It’s complex and fruity without being sweet, a serious beer with a nice flavor. 

Continuing on theme, we’re off to De Halve Maan, the oldest working brewery in Bruges.  Brewing on this sight has been going on since 1564 and the current family has owned the place since 1856.  They recently made the news around the globe for putting in an underground beer pipeline.  By the time the story got to America, it sounded like the pipe would provide for free-flowing taps in homes and businesses.  The real story is more practical… when the company expanded brewing operations, they ran out of space in the tight center of town, so now the beer is piped to the new bottling facility two miles away.  The multi-million euro investment was made because it was important to the family to keep the brewing operating in the original location.  It’s a nice story and we celebrated it with a few more fresh beers, Stephan trying to order me the strongest things on tap.  (You’ll have to try harder next time buddy, I’ve been practicing since I was 15…)

Well lubricated, it’s time for lunch.  Adorable restaurant-bakery with a big communal table running down the center.  I over order as the menu is nice and my beer brain is chanting “nom-nom-nom”.  By the time we leave, it’s like another day.  The sky is blue, the sun is shining and the wind has died down.  We wander and I retake some pictures now that we have a better backdrop.  No trip to Bruges would be complete without some of Belgium’s second most important product, so our hosts take us to Dominique Persoone, purportedly the country’s finest chocolate.  It is unbelievable.  We buy waaaaay too much to bring home as gifts so the shopkeeper give us a zippered cooler bag to transport our carry-on bounty across the pond.  On the way to the car, stop at one more chocolate shop, Chocoladehuisje, for Mandy to pick up the perfect mothers day gift for her dad. 

Dinner is a special event that Stephan and Isabelle have been planning for us for weeks.  They tell us their friends Bart and Yori own Restaurant de Vijverhoeve we know we’re in for a treat, but it’s not every day that a Michelin starred chef picks you up at the house in his SUV in the middle of dinner service.  The resturant is situated in a restored farmhouse with a warm, sleek interior and finely manicured grounds.  Once seated, Yuri, a seasoned sommelier, guides us through the wine list and explains the menu.  We get the tasting menu which features fresh local provisions, prepared elegantly, and served as some of the prettiest dishes (and on some of the prettiest dishes) we have ever seen.  

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Amsterdam, Holland, Belgium, London Day 6 - To The Sea

Our hosts were up early and fresh pastries appear.  We exercise their superautomatic coffee machine for a few rounds of bold caffe.  Stephan’s son Brian is watching his shop today, and Stephan has taken the day off to show us around.  We’re headed to the North Sea, just 20 minutes or so from Sluis.  First stop is Knokke, Belgium (see, I knew we were going to Belgium!).  Knokke is an affluent shore town on par with Miami Beach.  We notice the change in the cars immediately as we pull into town.  The place looks like a car show and is just dripping with high end automobiles of the new and vintage varieties.  It’s very windy and raining on-and-off, weather that keeps most exotics in the garage, but not here.  Within 50 meters of our parking spot we see both a Ferrari and a Lamborghini parallel parked. 

We walk as Stephan shows around.  Tall buildings of condos, chic shops, plenty of new construction,   the center of town is built-up like Monaco.  We walk along the beach, each block separated by fences, each beach lined with rows of colorful little lockers.  The lockers are rented for the season so beachgoers can stash their gear and be ready to hit the sand at a moment’s notice.  Fighting the cold spring wind, we get back into the car to finish the tour.  As we make our way out of the center of town, the place really opens up, the homes bigger the beach less crowded.  This is way more appealing.  The road continues around the newly built preserve with restored wetlands, freshly planted dunes and a bike path ringing the several square kilometer space.  It’s part of a larger conservation and restoration program taken on by the local and federal government.  Across the road, Stephan shows us another broad stretch of land, this one reestablished about 10 years ago.  It’s lush green native plants’ natural beauty a testament to the program’s success. 

We arrive Cadzand, the shore town where Stephan has his shop on the strand.  The shop has been in the family for three generations and we greet Brian minding the counter.  It’s a classic beach shop with colorful chairs and sand toys catering to visitors old and young.  We have lunch at a newly built restaurant overlooking the surf, rough hewn timber and big windows.  Families walking the beach or riding bikes despite the brisk wind in the foreground, too small boats fighting too big waves off the shore and big industrial vessels along the horizon.  Just a day in the life of the North Sea.  After lunch we walk the beach a bit. The place has the feel of the South Jersey shore towns we’ve spent so much time in.  Coming off the beach, we walk back along a paved trail a few blocks from the beach which is lined with trees.  Stephan says he hasn’t been on this trail in 20 years, but it still has a warm familiar feel for him.  We come full circle back to the shop and continue on our adventure. 

We drive back into Breskens, the town where we landed yesterday on the ferry.  This was once the home to a lively fishing industry, but now only a few working boats remain.  On the docks is an interesting old museum dedicated to the nautical history of the port which gives us a good perspective of the transition this town finds itself in.  The three towns together paint a good picture of this part of the country, ancient and modern, traditional and transitional.

Back in Sluis, the wind has died down and the late afternoon sun is warming on our skin.  Mandy and I wander around on our own, checking out the cute shops and generally just enjoying the scene.  Stephan and Isabelle have a special dinner planned: lobster with asparagus soup, fresh salad and fresh white asparagus.  The local lobsters are blue.  Really, remarkably blue, which is why they are called Blue Lobsters.  Stephan has four great big numbers delivered to the house which, after splitting, are done in just a few minutes on his beloved Big Green Egg charcoal grill.  Brian joins us for dinner and the five of us talk and laugh and eat and drink well into the night.  I can picture the scene from our typical vantage point – outside looking in.  I’d be standing on the dark street, light and laughter and warmth flowing in tones of golden light out of the second story window.  I smile quietly to myself, happy to be an insider, if only for few short nights.

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Amsterdam, Belgium, London Day 5 - Off to Belgium, Kinda

We wake early and Uber to the Amsterdam Centraal.  We take the train to Vlissingen.  We hope.  Maybe we’re headed to Frankfurt, but it’s hard to tell, especially since at one point we need to change trains, which involves moving up a dozen cars and getting back onto the same train.  It’s all very Dutch, but very civilized just the same.  Miraculously, we make it to our stop, or at least they tell us the train isn’t going any further.  We get off and walk a hundred meters to the ferry terminal.  There’s one ferry to Breskens, Belgium, so we get tickets and amuse ourselves in the snack bar, think truck stop with boats.  We look in the tall deli case and use the time honored ennie-meenie method to pick the croquet, a cigar sized seafood dumpling of indeterminate origin and the fregola, a cigar sized sausage of indeterminate origin.  Mandy is traumatized, I sorta like them. 

There’s a problem.  We’ve planned this entire trip around seeing our Belgian friends Isabelle and Stephan.  But they’re not Belgian.  Nor is Breskens in Belgium, Nor is Sluis, the town they live in, in Belgium.  So, in hopes you never make the same mistake, here is an aside to explain what my middle school geography teacher should have taught me.

• The Netherlands: Formal name, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, a country
• Amsterdam: The capitol city of The Netherlands
• Holland: The northern two territories of The Netherlands.  Also what many people refer to the Netherlands as, including people who live there.  Also, a town I used to live in in Bucks County, PA.
• Belgium: A country that seceded from the Netherlands in 1830, and one where we will not be going today.
• Breskens and Sluis (pronounced slice or SLU-is): Towns not in Belgium where we will be going today.

Somehow or another, we end up in the right parking lot in the right marina in the right town in the right country and there is Stephan waiting for us.  Just like we planned.  Bags quickly loaded into his big BMW 6-Series and we’re motoring through the lovely countryside. 

Geographic and gastronomic trauma behind us, we pull into the fairy tale village of Sluis, complete with a clock tower, windmill and castle (well the castle is actually the town hall, but you get the picture).  It’s a tiny, ancient walled city where the word charming must have been invented.  It’s a tight knit community with lots of families living there for generations and it’s immensely popular with tourists when the weather is nice.  Isabelle is working the counter in her bookshop, which also serves as a post office and ING banking station.  The shop is neat and cheery and airy and Isabelle greets everyone with her effortless grace.  It’s the kind of place where a neighbor walking down the street pops into the shop and asks for help tying a necktie.  So there I am, tying a tie for a guy…

Stephan take us to their home upstairs to stash our bags.  We can’t wait to explore town, and Stephan is a wonderful tour guide, explaining the history, the current, and introducing us to virtually everyone we pass.  We walk a big loop, stopping for lunch and some good local beer.  Most of the shops are family owned and we love being able to walk to almost everything you could need.  Except asparagus.  

The local white asparagus is thing around here, and it’s only in season for a few short weeks.  Fortunately for us, now’s the time.  Stephan drives us the few miles through some more countryside to Spitsbroek, the local farm who made it big on this crop.  There’s a line, so we cue and have a look around.  On the surface it’s quaint (can I use charming again?) but when you look more closely you see a serious operation.  There’s even a specially engineered machine that slices the long stringy parts out of each stalk to guarantee tenderness.  We watch as one woman orders a few kilos of the strings, which will be boiled down into a soup base.  Stephan gets 2 kilos and we get the impression we already want more.  There was a quick downpour while we were at the farm, and Holland gives us a wide brilliant rainbow as recompence.  The landscape opens up so wide that we see both sides across the farmland.  (If you’re keeping score, that’s rainbows in France, Costa Rica and The Netherlands… no pressure next country)

We chill back at the house, catching up and enjoying the hospitality.  Isabelle closes up shop around 6 and Stephan and I head out to the next little town for some Chinese takeout.  It’s the little differences that make travel fun, and apparently Chinese food, only authentic in China, morphed differently in every country.  Good, just different.  Joining us for dinner is our hosts’ son Brian, Stephan’s sister Karin and Karin’s husband JP.  Wine flows, the company is great and the conversation is fun.  I find out JP owns a repair shop and we start talking cars.  He shows me his pictures of some of his collection and we have a new must-do on our trip.  We talk and laugh and carry on late into the night.  Talking before bed, Mandy and I realize that we both had a similar thought at some point during the night.  We’ve visited lots of historic walled cities in our travels and we’ve always wondered what it would be like to really be inside.  Glad we didn’t end up in Belgium.

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