Belgium - Brugge (Bruges)

After Gent, we drove to Brugge to visit one of the most famous Belgian City.

I read in my tourist guide that a good thing to do in Brugge was to close the guide and get lost. So I obeyed and we started to visit the nice little streets of the town. The canals, a nice and relatively quiet park, the Gruuthuse Museum (Brewery Museum)...

There were not too many people and it seemed a bit strange...

We had a salmon sandwich for lunch and a famous Belgian waffle, and I decided to open my guide again to see if we had seen the main touristic atractions. It turned out that we hadn't, and that the main places were at the other side of the city!

So after our tour of the untouristic places of the town, we arrived to the touristic part, where all the people were of course. We saw the Burg place, where the City Hall is located,

and the Markt, where all the famous Brugge little houses are.

In conclusion, Brugge is indeed very nice, but seems too much like a museum city, where only tourists go to take pictures. Gent was far more interesting!

Belgium - Gent (Gand)

Gent is located in the Flemish part of Belgium. Personnally, and maybe because of my French arrogance, I thought everyone would speak both French and Flemish. But it was not the case at all!

We arrived in Gent on the afternoon, and tried to find some change to pay the parking place. Asking for some change in a bar, we met Caroline, a very nice French-speaking girl, who offered to lead us around the city. And it was a very nice tour!
The architecture of Gent is similar to Brugge's, but the city is livelier, and full of "real" people, meaning not only invaded by tourists...

The cathedral St Bavon is very impressive, as are all the typical houses close to the main canal.

Caroline told us that the canals going through the city were once dried, but now the city government was trying to rehabilitate them, to make the city prettier...

Many works were going on in the city center, but the city seems a very nice place to live. Enjoying a beer on a terrasse, swimming in a new-built canal, or admiring the contrast between new constructions and old traditionnal buildings, time flew quite fast in Gent!

Belgium - Brussels

The capital city of Belgium. We managed to get to the center by car, and got rid of it as soon as we could. Fortunately, Brussels has a lot of public subterranean parking places.

We first arrived at the Grand Place of course, chef d'oeuvre of Baroque architecture.

We then visited the Galeries St Hubert, also known as Galeries Royales. Sorry for the French, but although Brussels is located in the Flemish part of the country, it is in its majority French-speaking.

After a short visit to the Manneken-Pis, a little statue made as a tribute to a small boy who supposedly saved the city peeing on the fire that threatened it, dressed as if just graduated to celebrate the end of school year, we wandered around the city trying to find the famous comic walls. And we found three of them!


I also want to recommend to the travellers going to Brussels soon, a restaurant located at the end of the Galeries St Hubert, and surprisingly quite cheap. The specialities du chef are salty and sweet pies, and incredibly good! I particularly recommend the Tarte Forestière and the one with carrots, cumin and coriander.

Belgium - Dinant

Dinant is a Belgian city, located in the French-speaking part of the country (Wallonie).
It is built between a cliff, where the city old fortress dominates, and the Maas (Meuse in French), one of the main Belgian river. This makes the city very narrow, and confers to Dinant its particular atmosphere. It is also the native place of Adolphe Sax, inventor of the saxophone in 1846.

We arrived at Dinant around 5 pm, and everybody was outside to enjoy the promenade along the river. People were sitted on the bar terraces, enjoying famous Belgian beers or other culinar specialities as the mossels and French fries (some post about Belgian food and drinks will be coming soon). One of the main restaurant was called Chez Bouboule, le roi de la moule. Belgian humor!

We stayed at night in Profondeville, a village closed to the Meuse, in a camping quite hard to find but small and quiet. We tried before to stay in a camping close to Namur, but the abundance of odd old people and garden dwarfs made us flee!

Fête de la Musique

La Fête de la Musique is the equivalent of Music International Day. It is celebrated every 21st of June, also know as the summer solstice. Pagans used to celebrated the summer arrival by spending the night outside, organizing parties, as it is the longest day of the year.

The official Fête de la Musique was created in 1982 by Jack Lang, a French politician and Secretary of Culture at this time.

That day, everybody is allowed to go on the street and play an instrument: professional musicians and amateurs play music, sing, scream, shout etc., in a happy cacophony. Concerts are organized in the whole country, and are free of course. Every park, every street corner, every public building hosts an exposition, a concert, a demo, where neophytes can listen, practice, participate.

Since 1985, la Fête de la Musique is also celebrated in Europe, and has been exported to different continents after that. Here are some of the posters made worldwide to announce the festivities. You can see more at la Fête de la Musique webpage.

CHILE

NEW YORK
BRISBANE
CHINA
GERMANY
ITALY

So... let's rock!

Tacos!!!!!!

Les voici les voilà, les célèbres tacos mexicains.

Pour les préparer, vous avez seulement besoin ... d'un marché!
Un bon marché à la mexicaine, où l'on trouve de tout: des tortillas (de farine de maïs ou de blé, au choix), du chicharron (peau de porc frite, personnellement je ne suis pas fan), des avocats pour préparer un bon guacamole fait maison, un fromage à pâte crue, des fèves toutes prêtes asaisonnées à la coriandre et aux petits oignons, et des nopales (ou figuiers de Barbarie), tous prêts aussi.A consommer sans modération!
Mode d'emploi: on mange avec les mains (chouette!), on prend sa tortilla que l'on fourre de ce que l'on veut. Tous les mélanges sont permis. Buen provecho!

Grippe porcine - un mois plus tard...

Où en est-on?
Et bien rassurez-vous, on n'en parle quasiment plus. Fin de championnat de football et élections de députés obligent. L'économie souffre, le tourisme ne se relève encore pas. Et pourtant... Pourtant la créativité mexicaine est toujours aussi vivante!
Quelques exemples en images.

La nouvelle version des 3 petits cochons: Si tu ne m'ouvres pas la porte, je vais éternuer et éternuer et je vais te contaminer!


Les nouveaux bureaucrates...


La nouvelle Catrina, la célèbre gravure de Posada.


La nouvelle façon de gérer ses économies: Non! La grippe porcine n'est pas une raison pour toucher à tes économies!!!


La théorie de la conspiration:

Entre grippe et tremblement de terre: un beau matin dans la ville de Mexico (séisme...).

Et pour finir: - pour éviter la panique à l'égard des élevages porcins, l'OMS a décidé de changer le nom de "grippe porcine" pour "grippe A H1N1. - Au secours!!!! Un A H1N1!!!!