More Canals & a Ferry Ride (Bruges to Middelburg)

After a yummy breakfast (included), I take an extended smoke break and re-photograph some of yesterday's shots and discover some new ones. 

The church with the courtyard that the concert was in. Cool church!

 Then it is time to pack and head on the road.

Did I mention that my bike's name is Rocinante?

Yes. That is what it is. A remote-controlled lawnmower for steep slopes.  Brilliant!

I reach the city (village!) of Damme. Groetings van Damme! (Greetings from Damme).  'ang on! That sounds familiar. Since Jean Claude is from Belgium, what are the bets that he is van Damme? ;-) Actually, I just looked it up in Wikipedia, and the Belgian city he is from is a suburb of Brussels and is 91 km from Damme, a HUGE distance in Belgium ;-)

About 6 kilometers east of Damme I run into this crossing of canals. Nice view.

Rorschach test anyone ?

I am out of cigarettes and inquire in a restaurant where to buy any. They try to send me back to Damme, damned! I decide to rough it to Holland, even though a pack is 1 Euro more expensive over there. I meant to buy a carton in Bruges  this morning, but the store opening was hours away.

My cell phone works again.  I must have crossed the border. Oh there it is (It looks more official and threatening looking back into Belgium).

These Dutch cows somehow know I'm not an ordinary Belgian from across the border

Sluis is very strange (Not surprising for a town that got its name from a canal sluice gate!). While looking for a store that sells cigarettes, I notice that about 4 out of 10 stores on the main tourist drag are drug stores with beauty products. And not small drug stores.

I am hungry so I sit down and eat a Wiener Schnitzel. When in Rome .... ;-) N.B.: the Schnitzel is better and cheaper than the food consumed in Belgium.  Things are looking up!

 Another 17 km to Breskens where I will have to find and board the first FERRY of this trip.

An elevation in Holland? Must be man-made!  A viewing platform?

Why does this evoke thoughts of Venice from afar? (After all; I've never been in Venice)

Now it is time to take a ferry:

NO, NO, NO !!! Entirely wrong kind of ferry depicted above. NO CARS allowed on my ferry! Only bicycles and pedestrians!

Let's try that again:  Now it is time to take a ferry:

That's more like it!

But it's not the ferry that get's me all excited.

 It's the pastel tones that radiate from everything around me

Well, there is one thing about the ferry that's very cool:  An electric bike charging outlet ;-)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Vlissingen on the other side of the Westerschelde (Stay tuned for the Oostershelde tomorrow ;-) is not very exciting. The island I'm on is not even a real island (stay tuned for a REAL island tomorrow ;-), because it is joined to the mainland by a tiny appendix. But then I'm in Holland, where every parcel of land is separated from the next by some draining ditch or canal anyway.  Speaking of canals:  Hearing the discussions and seeing the strategic maneuvering and then the frantic rush when one of these bridges opens is quite something ;-)

In Bruges II (The Sequel)

Only 70 persons are allowed on the tower at any one time (after you've seen the stairs, you'll understand; The stairs in Cologne Cathedral were like an Autobahn compared to this), so there is a natural line-up.  Add to that a cashier that is descendant from a slug or a sloth. But after 20 minutes wait I get to pay my 8 Euros and get to squeeze my way past the people squeezing past me on their way down. It's NARROW at the top!

taking pictures while standing in line. Soccer fans ;-(

Stone steps at first: see the rope? You'll need it!

Then it changes to wooden steps. Rope even more necessary!

Then I get to the chamber of the tower that houses the Carillon (Glockenspiel).  And it makes the Wurlitzer that I saw in San Francisco look like a children' toy.  Massive gears and a HUGE drum!

Thankfully no elephants were encountered on the stairs. It would have been impossible to squeeze by them!

The view from the top is a just reward for all the squeezing.

I'm not exactly sure why they needed SO MANY churches or cathedrals. Would one or two not have sufficed?

Squeezing down is even more precarious!

Yes, I was up there ;-)

On a ride around town I discover more sights:

Then I hear belle tunes coming out of the court yard of the church above.  Seems a concert is being prepared for tonight. Should I go ?  Tickets will be 16 Euros and they will be on sale at 8pm.  A few tourists squeeze into the courtyard to see what's going on but we are chased out by some authority person.

After too many glasses of Rose with dinner, I cycle over to the concert site, to shell out the 16 Euros for a ticket.  Alas, I am unable to, since when I approach the ticket booth I am approached by someone whose friend could not make it and who sells me his ticket for 10 Euros.  Dank U Well!

I am back at the concert site at 9:20 pm sans velo and Nils Frahm starts at 9:35.  While the 31 year old German sounds and looks cute in his fashionable jeans and his broken English, I do leave after one hour of the concert (at some point he mentions that there are still 180 minutes left !).  And it is not only the impression that the uncomfortable chairs make on my behind.  I do like Frahm's music, but I catch myself constantly waiting for the pseudo-orgasmic release and relief of Jean Michel Jarre's Oxygene. 

Sleep ....