The channel, a castle and a comedian
April 13, 2023 in Belgium ⋅ ⛅ 13 °C
12/4 – At sea unexpectedly.
So, as noted before, the French port strikes and storms with wind blowing up to 50 knots meant we couldn’t go to Giverny/Rouen which was disappointing but understandable. I felt sorry for one man who had booked the tour to the US WW2 battlefields as a pilgrimage for his father, and others who had Paris on their bucket list for special reasons, but on a cruise the weather and politics dictate what happens.
Instead we had a lazy morning, went to a couple of history talks, watched ‘The Greatest Showman’, movie, had a leisurely lunch and dinner, and ended the day in the theatre with all the entertainers contributing to ‘Songs from Broadway’ which played to a full house and ranged from Les Misérables to Grease. Cruise director Richard, dressed for the part and bathed in red light, did a great rendition of ‘Roxanne’ from Moulin Rouge, he’s got a good voice.
I’ve said before that the crew are excellent and we’ve found our stateroom team of two is great, very obliging. They clean thoroughly in the morning, restock everything, sanitise, even squeegee the inside and outside of the veranda glass. They’re always about with the cleaning stuff. Then they
Fellow passengers can be quite interesting, some sitting next to you might strike up a conversation or sometimes you just overhear conversations such as the one with a group of eight, some of the men obviously ex-servicemen who had been stationed in Germany in the 60s. ‘Waaaal, I was in the payroll office and one night we got word something was going down and we needed to move money out so we loaded up about $10 MILLION onto trucks and off we went. Wonder what would have happened if we turned left instead of right?’. I’d have liked that money.
Or some are weird – Pete heard someone say ‘she hates the excursions, she hates the at sea days, you wonder why she came on this trip’. The mystery ‘she’ wouldn’t have been a fun companion.
But on the other hand, talking to the neighbours at lunchtime, a lovely woman from Charleston and her friend from Maine who sometimes travel together. The lady from Maine owns a camp and a blueberry farm ‘native blueberries, much smaller, much more tasty’ and showed us photos of her neck of the woods, beautiful shores and sea and autumn colours. The other lady lives between a golf course and a small lake, the front of her house juts out over the water and……..an ALLIGATOR spends a lot of time under her deck. It’s fenced off so the alligator can’t get to her back door or driveway but evidently it gets quite interested if they are ‘grilling’ on the deck. New Zealand is on her radar for a trip, unless the alligator gets her first.
Unfortunately late in the day we found out that there were two cruise ships stuck in Bruges and no dock available to Jupiter until early afternoon so we were back to square 1 – no morning excursion and the afternoon one would be delayed. So here’s what happened.
13/4 – Dry land at last: a short afternoon in Bruges
I was awake by 6am and could see the lights of Calais and other towns sparkling on the horizon, as well as the slow blink of a lighthouse. The sea was still rough and it had been raining overnight so it’s no wonder the sea was really dirty sailing into Zeebrugge, and we needed two tugs/pilots for extra safety.
We had a quiet morning, went to the port talk about Amsterdam and that was all until after lunch when we headed out with guide Mark on an abbreviated visit to the small town of Damme and on to Loppem Castle https://www.kasteelvanloppem.be/en/visit, with a stop at Roose’s Chocolate Factory in-between. It’s pronounced ‘Roses’ and I was a bit worried it was ordinary old Roses chocs from our supermarket but no. Chocolates are hand-made and we could see the staff at work making and packing, lots of different chocolates and truffles to buy, and some generous samples too (not that we tried them???).
In Damme we stopped at the 12th century city hall, a pretty building with statues of important people and a tinkly carillon of bells chiming at 3pm. We got a pretty thorough explanation of the various statues on the building, totally unretained in my brain other than marriages of convenience such as Margaret of York (statue on the end right side) married to cement the wool trade as the Flemish needed English wool for their fabrics. Also noted that women were actually quite powerful and ruled in their own right, not just as a consort in many cases. However, women only got the vote in Belgium in 1948.
Mark’s commentary was fairly continuous, slightly political, a lot of it went over my head but some things stuck. We went past a windmill (pictured), on the top is a mermaid who, according to legend, was captured but instead of being kept was sent to the local fish market and sold! He said that prices have risen 17% in the last year due to the Ukraine war, power and gas are much more expensive, and people are starting to put solar panels on their houses. He talked quite a bit about both world wars and the part Belgium played including his father having been captured twice, escaped at the end of the war and was caught and helped by an American GI ‘Hands UP!’ and he answered ‘Belgium’, the only English word his father knew apparently. The local population had been starved, took a long time to recover.
The countryside was flat, lots of pollarded willow trees lining the roads (apparently those trees and poplars are important for water and keeping things healthy, not sure how that worked), a couple of canals, lots of cycle paths even alongside quiet country roads. There were a few sheep but not much other than grass though with the war farmers are looking to grow wheat again. Farms used to be smallholdings but about 50 years ago the government decided they needed to be bigger, land was consolidated and the farmhouses were sold to townies who now use them for weekend/holiday homes.
Our main stop was Loppem Castle which is a mid-19th century, very large, house, rather than a castle. It’s set in pretty grounds with a small lake but unfortunately our visit was shortened so no time to have a walk round nor to get lost in the castle’s famous maze. I was interested because it was part-designed by Edward Pugin, son of Augustus who designed the London Houses of Parliament and there are similarities. We could only see the downstairs rooms – the main hall, dining room, and the ‘red’ and ‘blue’ rooms so-called because of the upholstery and stained-glass colours. I liked the tiled fireplaces and the tiled floor in the main hall, beautiful wood carved staircase, would really liked to have gone upstairs to see the bedrooms and a small museum. I have quite a bit of blue and white pottery from our time in Thailand and was interested in their small collection of pots, rather more valuable than mine I think. Photo is of a 16th century pot; the blue doesn’t really show up but I really liked it.
They rushed us back on board but in fact we didn’t leave port until close to 8pm when we were having dinner. We went to the show at 9.15, a second one from comedian Lloyd Hollett and it was every bit as good. He’s only ever been on TV once, does personal appearances and cruise ships, and he made the interesting comment that a few weeks ago he was asked to not refer to his audience at any time as ‘ladies and gentlemen’, it must be more PC. Following through on that, one of our guides said something similar, that she has now changed her comments to ‘my dear guests’.
But back to Lloyd, his two shows were well worth going to. He sings, chats, interacts with the audience, said he was a bit apprehensive about his humour going down with an American audience but they mostly got it. He filled the theatre both nights anyway and we went away happy. https://www.lloydhollett.com/Read more
