Sunday, October 19, 2008

In Bruges, revisited




The more retentive amongst you will recall that both Mrs S and I enjoyed the film 'In Bruges' enormously, it was beautifully filmed, very atmospheric, had great writing and some fine acting.

Bruges looked gorgeous in the movie and Mrs S was so impressed that she arranged a few days for us to take a little trip there. Since I'm growing increasingly hostile to (almost everything to be honest but especially) air travel we gave the Eurostar a whirl, it was, in fairness, a pain-free experience, indeed quite pleasurable and quick despite a recent fire in one of the tunnels which slowed everything down to the pedestrian crawl of a normal commuter train.

Our hotel (her ladyship had gone so far as to book us into the same hotel used by the protagonists in the movie) was (as you can see) picturesque, furnished exquisitely and priced accordingly.

We did the whole touristy thing, museums, galleries, boat trip, breathless staggering up the 366 steps of the belfry all surrounded by a small sea of beige crimplene and grey hair, I suspect that it may be a bit of an 'oldie' destination.
This was driven home as we lingered over our coffee at 10:30 pm and realised that every other restaurant in the square was closing and the staff in ours were patiently waiting for us to bugger off so they could do the same.

For those who've not been there, I heartily commend Bruges for a short break, good food (if calories and cream are your thing), superb beers, nice folk and a beautiful town. We captured a few snaps, I've put a few on Youtube with some music to try and make them a little less tedious, click on the image on the left and (hopefully) enjoy.

Saturday, October 04, 2008



It's late September ...


My little brother is an accomplished and experienced cyclist, spending many hours wending his way around the highways and byways of Munich, He does, it has to be admitted, have the occasional mishap, his latest involving a set of tram lines, some enforced lying down quickly in the road, a lot of pain and subsequently the removal of most of his original elbow and its replacement in shiny new titanium.
Since he has therefore been forced to withdraw from the Alle bayerischen Armes wringenden Schlüsse (All Bavarian Arm Wrestling finals) he and Jan joined us for a quiet relaxing recuperative weekend at the Barn, luckily for them this coincided with a two day sleepover for a number of ChaCha's chums, a specialist team of high pitched noise machines. The British weather, predictable as ever, delivered "Summer in a Weekend". It was, for us, a fun filled weekend oscillating wildly between mellow meandering and tooth-rattling maximum decibel high jinks. There's real joy in nice weekend filled with fun, family and friends, here's a few snaps ... click on the Schwäne (swans).