Thursday, July 31
We're back....
Sorry I haven't gotten around to posting anything. We got back late Sunday night and this week I have mostly been running errands and doing last minute things in preparation for heading home on Saturday. Here are a couple of photos from France. I'll post a slideshow after I get home. We had an amazing time.
Saturday, July 19
Het Vlasmuseum
So, Kortrijk has a long history of flax production and is known for it's linen and lace. Apparently the Leie has a chemical makeup that is perfect for retting flax (softening it to bring out the fibers).
The Flax Museum in in an old flax warehouse and contains 25 scenes with very life-like figures demonstrating all the steps of flax production from sowing the seeds all the way through weaving linen and making lace. I had the entire museum to myself and it was a little creepy at first, but also really interesting.
Weeding the fields:
Reaping:
Breaking and scutching:
Having a sandwich with your purse hanging on your foot:
I tried translating this but I think this language is a little outdated. It says something along the lines of if you are your own boss it is your duty to work hard for eight hours even though no one is watching you:
Bundling to be sold:
Flax combs (also called hackles):
This contraption is for babies who are learning to walk. You stick them in and they can walk back and forth on their own without falling down while you are spinning your flax and making your lace:
Afterwards I had a snack in the cafe at the museum:
And walked around outside a little:
And of course, no Belgian museum is complete without some modern art thrown in somewhere:
So we are leaving in the morning for an eight day road trip across France. We are driving straight through to Carcasonne which will be about 10 hours I think. (It costs about 70 Euros in tolls to get across France!) We are spending two nights in Carcasonne, two nights in Avignon, two nights in Marseilles and the last night in Nice before another very long day of driving back to Kortrijk, maybe 13 hours this time (and another 70 Euros). So far the only thing we've planned for sure is the hotels and the general route; the rest we are going to make up as we go along. We are hoping to visit St. Tropez and Monaco along the way as well.
I'll be away from email and the blog until Monday the 28th. We'll take lots of pictures!!!
Tot ziens!
The Flax Museum in in an old flax warehouse and contains 25 scenes with very life-like figures demonstrating all the steps of flax production from sowing the seeds all the way through weaving linen and making lace. I had the entire museum to myself and it was a little creepy at first, but also really interesting.
Weeding the fields:
Reaping:
Breaking and scutching:
Having a sandwich with your purse hanging on your foot:
I tried translating this but I think this language is a little outdated. It says something along the lines of if you are your own boss it is your duty to work hard for eight hours even though no one is watching you:
Bundling to be sold:
Flax combs (also called hackles):
This contraption is for babies who are learning to walk. You stick them in and they can walk back and forth on their own without falling down while you are spinning your flax and making your lace:
Afterwards I had a snack in the cafe at the museum:
And walked around outside a little:
And of course, no Belgian museum is complete without some modern art thrown in somewhere:
So we are leaving in the morning for an eight day road trip across France. We are driving straight through to Carcasonne which will be about 10 hours I think. (It costs about 70 Euros in tolls to get across France!) We are spending two nights in Carcasonne, two nights in Avignon, two nights in Marseilles and the last night in Nice before another very long day of driving back to Kortrijk, maybe 13 hours this time (and another 70 Euros). So far the only thing we've planned for sure is the hotels and the general route; the rest we are going to make up as we go along. We are hoping to visit St. Tropez and Monaco along the way as well.
I'll be away from email and the blog until Monday the 28th. We'll take lots of pictures!!!
Tot ziens!
Friday, July 18
Miscellaneous
So this week Andy has needed the car for a few days so I borrowed his Mom's bike and have been exploring on two wheels. It is super bike friendly here. And it is so nice on the bike because I can go much farther than on foot and if I get lost I can just backtrack which is not so easy to do, if not impossible sometimes, in the car. And it's so easy to stop and run in somewhere. You don't even need a bike lock here.
On Monday I rode to the Grote Markt and beyond. I checked out some bookstores. And did a little shopping. And went to the bank. And the supermarket. And checked out the public library, where I found this highly amusing little display in the front:
And then I found a small park. (All of the fountains in town have been colored pink by a local artist for a few weeks as part of an exhibit that is scattered throughout town.)
And, are table dances an American thing??
On Tuesday and Wednesday I had the car again but I didn't accomplish much. Mostly just posting here, doing a little bit of work on the computer, emailing, watching TV, shopping (there are huge 50-70% off sales right now for the end of Summer), washing dishes, laundry, grocery shopping and cooking dinner. And sometimes running errands with Andy after he's done with work.
Today, Friday, I had the bike again and visited the Flax Museum this afternoon. I got some nice photos and really enjoyed it but I don't have time to post now. I'll get them up tomorrow....
On Monday I rode to the Grote Markt and beyond. I checked out some bookstores. And did a little shopping. And went to the bank. And the supermarket. And checked out the public library, where I found this highly amusing little display in the front:
And then I found a small park. (All of the fountains in town have been colored pink by a local artist for a few weeks as part of an exhibit that is scattered throughout town.)
And, are table dances an American thing??
On Tuesday and Wednesday I had the car again but I didn't accomplish much. Mostly just posting here, doing a little bit of work on the computer, emailing, watching TV, shopping (there are huge 50-70% off sales right now for the end of Summer), washing dishes, laundry, grocery shopping and cooking dinner. And sometimes running errands with Andy after he's done with work.
Today, Friday, I had the bike again and visited the Flax Museum this afternoon. I got some nice photos and really enjoyed it but I don't have time to post now. I'll get them up tomorrow....
The River
NOTE: The sculpture is called 'The River' and is by Aristide Maillol. Apparently there is one in Antwerp as well...
Wednesday, July 16
It's NOT Only Rock 'n' Roll, Baby!!!
Sundays are Andy's day off so we decided to go to Brussels to check out an exhibit that we'd heard about called IT'S NOT ONLY ROCK 'N' ROLL, BABY!. It's basically art by musicians, including Brian Eno, David Byrne, and Yoko Ono. There were also two other smaller exhibits: Johan Muyle and a Latin American photography exhibit called Mapas Abiertos:
You couldn't take photos but there is a slideshow on the site that you can check out. And I did sneak a photo of one of David Byrne's pieces because I liked it so much:
A few shots from the walk to the museum:
And in this small sculpture garden that we walked past we discovered this same scuplture that we've seen both in Paris and in New York. It was closed for renovation so I couldn't get a shot from the front:
Here it is in the Tuileries Garden, outside the Louvre in Paris:
And in the garden at MOMA in New York:
I need to do a little research and find out why it lives in so many places....
And, lastly, proof that I have driven in Belgium:
You couldn't take photos but there is a slideshow on the site that you can check out. And I did sneak a photo of one of David Byrne's pieces because I liked it so much:
A few shots from the walk to the museum:
And in this small sculpture garden that we walked past we discovered this same scuplture that we've seen both in Paris and in New York. It was closed for renovation so I couldn't get a shot from the front:
Here it is in the Tuileries Garden, outside the Louvre in Paris:
And in the garden at MOMA in New York:
I need to do a little research and find out why it lives in so many places....
And, lastly, proof that I have driven in Belgium:
A Note About This Blog
If it seems like it takes me a long time to make these posts, it is because the interface for posting is maddening!!! It will only take five pictures at a time and once you have added them you cannot move them around within the post so they must be in the order that you want.
And after you've chosen your five pictures it takes 5 to 10 minutes for them to load and then sometimes they don't load and you have no choice but to start over.
So before you make a post you must know which pictures you want and in which order and if you have more than five you have to do them in batches starting at the bottom and there is a good chance it will fail at some point and you will have to start over from the beginning.
And beyond that, once you have everything there it randomly refuses to honor the spacing the you've entered. So some of the paragraphs and/or pictures have no blank line between them. And if you go back and edit, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Until now I have just persisted and changed and saved it over and over until it finally worked but I have no patience left for that now. My need for everything to be spaced correctly has been overpowered by my need not to spend 15 minutes trying to put a blank line between two photos...
It took me almost two hours to finish the previous post this afternoon. And that is without fooling with the spacing problem.
So anyway....I'm not just being lazy. :)
And after you've chosen your five pictures it takes 5 to 10 minutes for them to load and then sometimes they don't load and you have no choice but to start over.
So before you make a post you must know which pictures you want and in which order and if you have more than five you have to do them in batches starting at the bottom and there is a good chance it will fail at some point and you will have to start over from the beginning.
And beyond that, once you have everything there it randomly refuses to honor the spacing the you've entered. So some of the paragraphs and/or pictures have no blank line between them. And if you go back and edit, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Until now I have just persisted and changed and saved it over and over until it finally worked but I have no patience left for that now. My need for everything to be spaced correctly has been overpowered by my need not to spend 15 minutes trying to put a blank line between two photos...
It took me almost two hours to finish the previous post this afternoon. And that is without fooling with the spacing problem.
So anyway....I'm not just being lazy. :)
The Broel Tours and The Leie
Last Saturday I spent a little time exploring Kortrijk. I have been to the Grote Markt many times and ventured down streets in all directions but had not really strayed very far from there for fear of getting lost.
But I was tired of wandering around the same streets and decided to follow the river for a while to see what I could find. The river that runs through Kortrijk is called the Leie (as in 'Help me Obi Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope.') in Dutch or the Lys in French. (Everything here has a Dutch name and a French name, i.e. Kortrijk is also Courtrai.)
There are two towers at one point in the river called the Broel tours:
A little ways down from the Broel tours I found a park:
Here you can see one of the WWII memorials:
I watched them open some gates and let in a few small boats:
Although, I don't know exactly what the boats were doing because directly in front of them was this, so there was nowhere for them to go but backwards:
After walking through the park, I walked back on the other side of the river and went to a small museum by the Broel tours:
But I was tired of wandering around the same streets and decided to follow the river for a while to see what I could find. The river that runs through Kortrijk is called the Leie (as in 'Help me Obi Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope.') in Dutch or the Lys in French. (Everything here has a Dutch name and a French name, i.e. Kortrijk is also Courtrai.)
There are two towers at one point in the river called the Broel tours:
A little ways down from the Broel tours I found a park:
Here you can see one of the WWII memorials:
I watched them open some gates and let in a few small boats:
Although, I don't know exactly what the boats were doing because directly in front of them was this, so there was nowhere for them to go but backwards:
After walking through the park, I walked back on the other side of the river and went to a small museum by the Broel tours:
There was also a small Design Expo on the second floor:
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