Travel – Page 5 – The Bald Heretic – Short, bald dude with a goofy beard

Brussels – Day 3

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Woke up and had breakfast. Bundled up and headed to the Museum of Ancient Art and the Museum of Modern Art which are basically in the same place. The much anticipated RenÃ© Mageritte won’t be open until June of 2009, curse the luck!

The Museum of Ancient Art had quite the collection of Peter Paul Rubens paintings. We’ve seen his work in previous travels, but it still quickens the heart to stand in front of one in person.

Many other great masters represented. Enjoyed it immensely as well as the Modern Art Museum.

After that we headed back to the hotel to recombobulate and then headed to the other side of town to visit the Comic Strip Museum which is housed in a very cool art nouveau building designed by Victor Horta.

Apparently, Brussels is not only the birthplace of TinTin, but also The Smurfs. Although in Belgium they are more commonly known as Les Schtroumpfs.

This gave Cynthia a chance to exact her revenge on David Shephard for defaming her beloved William.

After that we headed off in search of the infamous Delirium Cafe, a bar that holds the Guinness World Record certificate for having 2,004 different beers available at all times.

We had a few lambics which were quite tasty and then headed off to dinner and then back to the hotel for some rest.

Tomorrow, Bruges!

This is an awesome trip!

Brussels – Day 2

Woke up early (surprisingly), got breakfast and ventured onto the Brussels Metro to make our way out to the outskirts of town and visit The Atomium and Mini-Europe.

We thought we’d only be about an hour but we ended up staying most of the day. There will be many pictures to see after I get back home and process them.

The Atomium is really cool to see. It looks like one of the aliens from War Of The Worlds or something. Quite a site.

After returning back to the hotel we re-combobulated and headed back out for more festive festival action.

One of the cooler things they have here are these VERY elaborate carrousels. Looks very Jules Vern

We hiked down to the skating rink which is festival central with the crystal Christmas tree and a heated restaurant tent.

On our way back to the hotel for the night we stopped for warm wine and waffles

Tomorrow we are planning to visit a few museums and stay a little warmer. For now, bedtime as we are exhaustulated.

Light Show @ Grand Place Video

Grand Place Light Show – Brussels from baldheretic on Vimeo.

Brussels – Day 1

We’ve arrived in Brussels without incident. The plane ride went smooth and we easily sorted getting the train from the airport to Central Station for a mere â‚¬2.80 a piece and and before you know it, we were checking into our hotel which is literally across the street from Central Station.

I was amused to see a coke machine in the train station featuring Manekkin Pis.

It’s cold here. VERY cold. High today was right around freezing. But the sun is out! I’ll take it!

One of our first stops was Leonidas to get some chocolate.

We did a little walking around but were were pretty exhausted so went back to the hotel to take a nap.

After sleeping for a few hours we headed back out. The sun was down and we wanted to see the light show in the Grand Place. It was really something to see. Moving lights set to music.

I’ll post a video later.

I’ll say this, swapping lenses and shooting with a tripod in this cold is not the most fun. But I am determined.

Now it’s off to bed to sleep in earnest. More tomorrow.

Bon Voyage

This trip to Belgium is our Christmas present to each other.
We leave in an hour.

William is coming with us.

Happy holidays, everyone!

Final Preparations

Passport

Man, I am going to miss this passport when it’s time to renew it in a few years. It has all my stamps in it!

Time is growing short and we’re making the final preparations to leave the country.

Dooley has been dropped off at Adventures In Birds. They’ll board him till we get back and we know they’ll take good care of him. Still, it breaks my heart to have to do this to poor Dooley. He’s like me, a creature of habit and prone to homesickness.

Called the bank to let them know I would be using my debit card overseas. In these days of aggressive fraud protection, you don’t want your money stream frozen because the bank thinks there’s something amiss.

Made Xerox copies of important documents. Hopefully, they’re not needed. But it’s good to have a record of your account and passport information just in case.

Cleared the fridge of spoilables. Don’t want to come home to post-hurricane like horror.

Packed and re-packed. Everything except the camera in a single backpack. Camera is in a small camera bag with a few lenses. The backpack is loaded with sundry electronic doo-hickies including chargers, socket converters, CPAP, netbook and tripod with a little room left over for a change of clothes or two.

In an unexpected turn of good fortune, I found my Flip Mino. It had been lost for several months. I thought it must have fallen out of my pocket while out and about and lost forever. As it happened, I was looking for something else the other day and my search lead me to look under the couch, and there was the Mino. A good omen!

We’ll be doing a final check of all system before departure and then I am off to do my final Technology Bytes show of the year tonight. Geekradio on Xmas eve promises to be a lot of fun so tune in if you are near a radio or stream it live from kpft.org.

I’ll be updating here during the trip as often as I can with photos, videos and commentary. If you are on twitter go ahead and follow @baldheretic as I hope to “tweet” with some frequency.

Wish us luck!

Soon, Brussels

Grote Markt (Grand Place), Brussels Belgium.

Grand Place

No, I did not take this photo. I grabbed it from the Winter Wonders Web site.

We leave in a few short days and I find myself hyperventilating with anticipation. We’ve done our preliminary test packing and it looks like we’ll be able to fit most everything into our respective backpacks. This includes my recently acquired Manfrotto super deluxe tripod so I can take extended exposure shots. Travelling light and without checking luggage is HUGE in terms of piece of mind and rapid mobility.

The overseas flight from Atlanta to Brussels is not even half full at this time. I am hoping this translates to some stretching out and maybe some sleep before we get there. If not, we know how to beat the jet-lag by now. You just have to push through that first day.

In terms of camera gear I will, of course, have the Sony Alpha 700. My lens arsenal will consist of the the Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 as my primary walk about with the 11-18mm for wide angle shots and the Sigma 30mm f/1.4 for evenings and other low light situations that require me to shoot handheld.

On the fence regarding the Minolta 70-210mm and the Sony fisheye. We’ll see.

The forecast looks good. Cold, but no precipitation.

On the agenda for Brussels:

Mini-Europe because I want to do some fake miniatures of a real miniature. It’s also the location of Atomium which was created for the Expo ’58 (the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair).
The RenÃ© Magritte Museum because, well MAGRITTE!
Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences to see some whale skeletons.
Royal Museums of Fine Arts to see ‘The Death of Marat‘ by Jacques-Louis David.
The Belgian Comic Strip Center to see the cartoons!
Delirium Cafe which boasts over 2,000 different beers to choose from.
La Mort Subite for more beer.

And as much more as we can squeeze into the time we’ll be there. We are tentatively planning a side trip to Bruges which is only an hour away by train. There’s an ice sculpting festival going on that I would like to check out.

If we have the energy, we’ll ring in the new year at the Grand Place which I believe will have a fireworks display before heading back to The States on new year’s day.

Forecast

Clear skies and cold. No snow (boo) no rain (yay!)