Belgium – country, towns and waterways

[gnome12]

15 minutes ago, jpalbny said:

 

Just type it. It's much simpler than you think. 

 

Type "@" and immediately start typing the username that you want. Suggestions will come up as you type. Keep typing until the choices are narrowed down and  you can choose the correct one. 

 

Uppercase vs lowercase doesn't matter. But spaces do matter. And many usernames look alike. Safest to check the exact spelling of the one you'd like to tag before doing so.

 

@CPT Trips

The point is that you have to actually select the name from the list that pops up, not just type the whole thing.

[notamermaid]

I also find it helpful that the colour comes up in the suggestions if the person does not have an avatar, I recognize names that way sometimes. If you have changed the letter with colour to your personal avatar photo that is displayed in the suggestions. A helpful feature.

 

@CPT Trips thanks for the info. Cool name for a place, the 11th commandment.

 

notamermaid

 

[CPT Trips]

Thanks @jpalbny et al.

 

@notamermaid is that the one that goes “beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy”?

Edited March 18, 2022 by CPT Trips

[Canal archive]

Or Beer is the bread of life!

[Host Jazzbeau]

6 hours ago, CPT Trips said:

Thanks @jpalbny et al.

 

@notamermaid is that the one that goes “beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy”?

That was Benjamin Franklin, and I don't believe that he believed in Commandments!

[CPT Trips]

52 minutes ago, Host Jazzbeau said:

That was Benjamin Franklin, and I don't believe that he believed in Commandments!

I'm a Philly boy and a beer geek. I think you have been taken in by a USENET myth.

https://www.porchdrinking.com/articles/2017/01/11/beer-is-proof-that-god-loves-us-and-wants-us-to-be-happy/ . Nonetheless the statement rings true.

 

But this thread is about Belgium, so “Chocolate is nature’s way of making up for Monday’s.” 

[Host Jazzbeau]

18 minutes ago, CPT Trips said:

I'm a Philly boy and a beer geek. I think you have been taken in by a USENET myth.

https://www.porchdrinking.com/articles/2017/01/11/beer-is-proof-that-god-loves-us-and-wants-us-to-be-happy/ . Nonetheless the statement rings true.

Back in the day when newspapermen used to check their sources, they would have put this one in the special category of 'facts too good to check.'  That's my story, and I'm sticking to it!!!

[Canal archive]

Research, research and research again used to be the journalist and reporters watchword it would seem no longer. The young don’t seem to realise the benefits of testing the beers around Europe or the USA depending where you are. Mind you my stepfather used to brew a very pleasant drop.

[CPT Trips]

@Canal archive It depends on what your definition of young is. If you mean the preppy “I like beer…” type, I agree with you. But, the explosive growth in craft brewing seems to indicate that once of legal age and outgrowing “light/lite” beers youngish folks are capable of a sophisticated palate.

Its interesting to me that a local pharm school started a post baccalaureate brewing certificate program. https://www.usciences.edu/misher-college-of-arts-and-sciences/biological-sciences/brewing-science-certificate/index.html

 

[notamermaid]

9 hours ago, CPT Trips said:

Thanks @jpalbny et al.

 

@notamermaid is that the one that goes “beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy”?

If we get it close to the traditional form, I guess it would be something like "Thou shalt make good use of hops, malt and water".

 

This looks an interesting website: https://belgium.beertourism.com/about-beer/hops-malt-and-water

 

So in Antwerp cruise ships and river cruise ships dock close together. I did not know that, I am surprised large ships can get that close to town, i.e. inland. The Scheldt is obviously quite deep (dug out) there already.

 

notamermaid

 

[Canal archive]

CPT Yes it’s the ‘preppy’ or ‘hooray Henry’ types I mean, but Its the ‘we started our brewery in the shed at the bottom of the garden’  types you have to really check the labels as to strength for. Yikes I’m sure some could blow your head off but they still manage to pack in oodles of flavour.

[ural guy]

JP-  Nice pics, thanks for posting.  During last snow storm I visited your Smug Mug page.  The trips are impressive, but the effort you put in to label all the photos?  Chef's kiss, that really put it over the top, great job.  Is that a group effort, or do you or Chris do the work solo?

 

Belgium-  Brugge, if you can stay overnight, well worth it once the day trippers are gone.  Similar to Rothenburg in that regard.  Great place for photos.  We were really impressed with Ghent, just had a neat vibe.  It helped that we had a great apartment in the pedestrian area, right on a square.

 

We were in Belgium late November, and the hot chocolate was off the chart.  One place, you could pick out different types of chocolate chips, and they'd do a custom blend.  Addictive stuff, and as I had two of my daughters with me, something that is frequently remembered and commented on.  The 'Chocolate Spoons' you can buy to make it at home, one of the best souvenirs ever.  Joys of travel, getting to relive it through chocolate.

 

Brugge:  Beautiful at night.

 

 

And Day.

 

Ghent.

 

 

Ypres, just after 11 November, believe this is Chapel of St George.

 

 

And Brussels, only spent a night prior to flying out.

 

 

[ural guy]

In Brugge, I also got lucky with a foggy morning...it was probably 0500, and with that atmosphere and surroundings, so easy to imagine you're back a few centuries.

 

 

 

 

[Canal archive]

Try to get to the pagent in Bruges then you are back quite a few centuries. We were told that the tunes played from the belfry are nursery rhymes I’m not to sure if that’s the case. Beautiful city their lace is exquisite.

[jpalbny]

50 minutes ago, ural guy said:

JP-  Nice pics, thanks for posting.  During last snow storm I visited your Smug Mug page.  The trips are impressive, but the effort you put in to label all the photos?  Chef's kiss, that really put it over the top, great job.  Is that a group effort, or do you or Chris do the work solo?

 

Thanks, uralguy. We both take the pictures. I am the one who organizes and labels them. Chris is the picture picker who chooses the ones to post. There are many more on my storage hard drive which don't get posted.

 

It's a bit of an undertaking but not too bad if you keep up with it. I use Adobe Photoshop Elements and I have a library of about 125,000 digital pictures from ~20 years of traveling. With the exception of just a few trips where I was lazy (or overwhelmed), every picture is captioned with at least the place it was taken, but often I've added more detail. I also have the photos indexed by trip and for cruises, by the specific port stop.

 

It's pretty easy to add the photo captions and the keyword tags in Adobe. You can also add the caption and/or tags to multiple photos at once so the task isn't too onerous. Then once you're done adding in Adobe you can save the caption and tags to the actual photo file so that it transfers to SmugMug or other sites when you upload there. So you only have to do this once. And nowadays all of the cell phone photos are geotagged so if I can't remember the location I can find it on Google Maps and figure out what I was photographing.

 

The upside of all that work is that if you were to ask me what things we saw on such-and-such a cruise 15 years ago, I can find those photos in seconds. And they are labeled, so there are no random pictures of something I can't remember.

 

Speaking of which, I am about a year behind on posting pictures to SmugMug. I need to post photos of our last few trips, before the next one starts on Friday.

[Host Jazzbeau]

3 hours ago, jpalbny said:

Speaking of which, I am about a year behind on posting pictures to SmugMug. I need to post photos of our last few trips, before the next one starts on Friday.

No pressure... 🤣

[CPT Trips]

13 hours ago, Canal archive said:

CPT Yes it’s the ‘preppy’ or ‘hooray Henry’ types I mean, but Its the ‘we started our brewery in the shed at the bottom of the garden’  types you have to really check the labels as to strength for. Yikes I’m sure some could blow your head off but they still manage to pack in oodles of flavour.

Like this? From a local craft brewery:

 

“BARREL AGED (Limit 2 per Customer)
LE DÉJEUNER 10 oz. $10 BARREL AGED CANADIAN BREAKFAST STOUT
13.3% ABV
This luscious, sticky imperial stout is stuffed with layers of caramel and roasted malts. Aged for two years in barrels that once held Heaven Hills Bourbon and the organic Vermont maple syrup. Further conditioned on maple sugar and Mexican Chiapas coffee beans to produce liquid breakfast in a glass.”

 

For the metric folks, that’s a 295 ml pour . . . 

[Host Jazzbeau]

Only 13.3% ABV?  I'll see you and raise you to 17.3%:

 

And if that's not enough, or you don't like Stout – how about 15-20% in an IPA:

 

But that's not readily available, so I content myself with their year-round 90 Minute IPA, which is 'only' 9% ABV [and is won–der–ful !!!]

 

But now that I have found it, I must seek out this World Wide Stout...

 

Oh, and BTW these are all sold in full 12 oz. bottles.  [What is that 10 oz. thing? Is it like the Canadian dollar? 😉]

[notamermaid]

Aiyaiyai (a sound accompanied by notamermaid shaking her head), some people really need to overdo this, don't they? That is "Doppelbock" range and above. The explanation for bock and doppelbock is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bock

 

While they are German, I am sure the Belgians have some fun creating the heavy brews as well.

 

notamermaid

 

[CPT Trips]

Ah, Goliath. The Boston Beer 6 million barrels annual beer production are no longer anywhere close to the garden shed brewery ethos. They do make good beer and they are one of my go tos when in a place with only corporate taps.

But . . .

 

Bonesaw is the maker of the beer I mentioned. It’s family owned and founded by a regular user of said instrument producing 12,000 barrels annually. Not even sure if it’s a David in comparison to Boston Brewing.

[Canal archive]

Now I have to send all this information to our friends fellow narrowboaters he is the master at sourcing exceptional beers this lot will get him hopping. By the way narrowboaters have been accused of navigating by pubs ( sellers of particularly beer)

[Canal archive]

We have had one beer tasting evening on Scenic, I think it was on a Rhine cruise. The lounge was full, I would say most of the cruisers were there, we had a wonderful time and the poor guy who was in charge was almost overwhelmed. It certainly got all the different nationalities discussing and got our one Japanese couple involved for the first time. It’s the first time I’ve seen those small glasses. The crew voted it the best evening on a river cruise they’d had. 

[ural guy]

JP-  Thanks for sharing your method...it will be a retirement project.  Going through my Belgium pics, I pulled about 10 of the spouse/kids to share with them, so a win/win.

 

Would love to hear some details of your Croatia trip if you have time later.  Enjoy your trip.  21 days and a wake up and we're off to Portugal.

[notamermaid]

On 3/17/2022 at 11:22 PM, notamermaid said:

Hang on, this is a canal, right? So where is the river? Does Brussels even have a river? Now that is an interesting and somewhat sad story for another day.

Brussels does have a river, it is called the Senne. And it is still there somewhere. Rivers in towns are perfect for use for drinking, workshops like tanners, getting rid of lots of unpleasant things or let us say anything you want to dispose of and when you do this often enough your river turns into a sewer. And a health hazard. This is what happened in Brussels. I know, the Thames and the Seine were massive sewers in former times, but the Senne literally became the sewer - underground. Here is a video about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSU9zYBZPy8

 

The weirdest meaning of "a stroll along the river" that I can think of...

 

But the water of the Senne is still important to the city and upstream from it, the Senne is a normal river. Just not very big. And there is hope for parts of the river on the outskirts of the agglomeration. The people of Brussels are rediscovering it, or at least the authorities, hoping to give the Senne a better image: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/27/brussels-battles-old-prejudices-as-it-frees-unloved-river-senne-from-its-vault

The project went ahead and there are bigger plans as well: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20211005-a-river-runs-through-it-brussels-uncovers-hidden-waterway

 

notamermaid

 

 

[TER777]

Getting back to the frites, French Fries were actually invited in Belgium. You can learn all about it while in Bruges. 
http://frietmuseum.be/en/home-en/