In Bruges

The black comedy In Bruges* somehow found its way to the top of our Netflix queue a couple of years ago, and Biscuit has been determined to visit the eponymous Belgian city** since we watched the opening credits. We had a free weekend during my recent conference trip to London, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity. Bruges attracts huge numbers of tourists, and a couple of days seemed like about all we would need.

All photos courtesy of Biscuit. She had a new camera and more free time than I, so she was designated official trip photographer. This is part of the view from the top of St. Paul's Cathedral in London.

About an hour northwest of Brussels by train, Bruges is the capital of the Belgian province of West Flanders, which you may know from the WW I poem about its fields.

Bruges rose to prominence as a seaport. A half hour canal tour is one of the ''must do" tourist activities.

Bruges was a city of some significance during the Middle Ages, with its heyday in the first half of the last millennium. Much of the medieval architecture remains, and every stretch of the city center holds some new marvel. It is a perfect spot for a fantasy stroll, at least until around 9:00 AM when the buses start delivering day-trippers. By mid-afternoon the squares look like Disney World. Most of the gawkers are gone by 7:00 or so, which makes for nice evening strolls, too.

The Church of Our Lady was built primarily before 1500. The 400 ft. spire is still one of the tallest brick towers in the world. The carvings and sculptural details make it easy to believe it took three hundred years to build. Oh yeah, and there is a sculpture by Michelangelo inside, if you're into that sort of thing.

A courtyard below the church, and one of the city's ubiquitous horse drawn carriages. The horses seem to enjoy the tours quite a bit more than the drivers.

In the evenings and early mornings, it is hard to imagine a better place to sit and relax than beside one of Bruges' canals.

During the fat part of the day the canals are more loudspeakers and motorboats than oases of quiet contemplation.

One should also be ready to pay tourist prices for everything. It hurts a little less counting out Euros, but the € is not what it used to be, and it stings to pay eight or ten of them for a few bits of chocolate. I did, of course, because Belgian chocolate is delicious. I just didn't buy any for anyone else.

Some dufus standing in the way of a perfectly good picture of the Provincial Court. If you click through you will see some of the crazy detail on the building, which seemed to derive from the "proud grandmother's living room" school of architecture. An hour before this picture was taken, this square was so crowded you could hardly walk through it.

The Belfry of Bruges is the city's most famous landmark, and dominates the center of town. It also figures prominently in the movie. It has burned several times, though not while we were there.

This was the seaport during the middle ages.  With yet another bell tower. You can't swing a  German tourist in this town without hitting a cathedral or medieval church.

As usual, Biscuit did a wonderful job finding a hotel. The Grand Hotel Casselbergh is only a couple of blocks from the Provincial Court, but far enough off the square to lose most of the crowds. It wasn't cheap, but our room was huge by European standards, breakfast was free, and the service seemed first rate.

The view from our hotel window. Luckily, most of the noisy stuff was the other direction, so it was surprisingly quiet where we were. Not counting the tour boats on the canal, of course.

The view of our hotel window from the canal. Ours is the top window on the right, I think.

We found a small French restaurant for lunch one day, and it was marvelous. I never knew that I could like fennel so much, or that its licorice taste would go so well with fish. Other than that, we mostly ate in pubs. Mussels and fries doesn't really have the appeal for me that it seems to have for some people, even if you say it in French.

Le Buhne had seats for about a dozen people. The proprietor was a wonderful mature French lady, and everything we ate was wonderful.

This may be the most famous dog in Europe, or at least the most photographed. He apparently spends most of his time hanging out in this window, and every tour boat pauses for people to take pictures. He left for a few minutes around checkout time -- apparently he has duties at the front desk -- but returned promptly.

I doubt we will ever feel the need to go back, but we both had a wonderful time. It was a nice counterpoint to the week in London. And we got to ride the EuroStar through the Chunnel, so that's one I can check off the list.

We had a little time to kill before our train back to London, so we sat by the canal and relaxed. Actually, Biscuit watched the dog and I relaxed. That bridge is like 500 years old or something. After a while you get numb to the fact that this was a big city when Columbus was begging jewels from Queen Isabella.

I don't really have much else to say, but I promised Daisyfae I would post pictures.

If we ever go back, it will probably be so Biscuit can visit the swans and baby ducks. Biscuit likes animals.

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* Think Grosse Point Blank with better scenery.

** The Belgians spell it "Brugge" but the movie uses the English spelling, so I'm sticking with it.

Last one of these (for now)

I knew last night was going to be the last night I would have clear skies for a while, with a near-hurricane in the Gulf and real November weather on the way, so I rushed home yesterday from the most incomprehensible lecture I have attended in years and set up the big scope one more time.

Jupiter travels behind a giant tree in my yard by about 8:00 this time of year, and the Moon and our bellicose neighbor Mars are rising late and staying mostly in the trees, so I found myself out in the yard around 11:00 just sort of cruising the sky for something interesting. It's a bit like the cruising we did in high school, but it burns a lot less gas. The chances of getting lucky are about the same.

About the time I had determined that Andromeda and Triangulum were too directly overhead for the scope to reach, I noticed that Orion was coming into view so I decided to see if I could get a shot or two of M42, the Orion Nebula. I had already failed to get any usable pictures of several other deep sky objects, so it would be hard to imagine my surprise at the end of a five-minute exposure when this picture popped up on the little camera screen:



I know ways I can get better shots, but I will need more new toys. And there is more I can do with software in post-processing once I learn how. But for the moment I am just going to enjoy the rare, pleasant surprise of success without preparation.

Maybe it's that global warming I've been hearing so much about

The weather here has been quite strange this fall. A former girlfriend called October "convertible month," but this year it rained practically every day. November has been surprisingly clear and mild so far, giving me an opportunity to get out for a little stargazing the last couple of nights.

So Sunday I finally got a chance to put the new camera on the big telescope and take a tour of the sky. We have a large number of big trees and a lot of light pollution, so there were only a few items of interest visible and I can't really do any long exposures, but I had a good time.

This is Almach, a double star that I discovered somewhat by accident when I was looking for stars to use to align my scope. You can see it these days rising in the eastern sky not long after sunset. You can resolve the two stars with a good pair of binoculars.



This is the wife's favorite picture of the moon, because of all the big craters that are visible out on the southern limb. The big crater in the middle is Tycho.



Last night it was clear again and there was a great full moon, so I brought out the little scope to get the whole thing in one shot. It's not as clear as the view from a mile high, but my Facebook friends seem to like it.



I tried to get some pictures of Jupiter before it went behind the giant trees in my yard, but I'm still trying to get the balance between keeping the Galilean moons visible and overexposing Jupiter.



I probably need to try eyepiece projection for planetary photography, which means I need to buy a tele-extender. Plus, I think I might need some filters. And maybe some new software. I guess I had better start with lottery tickets.

Star hunter update

The wife and I took a trip around the Four Corners area a couple of weeks ago to celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary. It may have occurred to you that my acquisition of a new camera and small telescope was specifically timed to coincide with this trip, which is absolutely true.

It wasn't so much the beautiful landscapes or wildlife that motivated me to spend a bunch of money and haul thirty extra pounds of crap with me all across the West. It wasn't even the fact that we were going to be in Albuquerque for the first day of the Balloon Fiesta. (You will have to suffer through more of all that when I work my way through the 2 gigabytes of pictures I brought back.) No, the thing that I really wanted to see was the night sky.



This picture of Orion, taken from the parking lot of the lodge in Mesa Verde National Park, tells the story. There are several hundred stars visible in this shot. On the clearest night at home I can see maybe a dozen in the same area. I spent most of both nights at Mesa Verde in and out of the room, alternately looking at the sky and reconfiguring my equipment* for another series of shots. Luckily for the wife, our other nights were all spent more or less in town, so she was able to get some sleep eventually.

Focusing a long lens on specks of light in total darkness is harder than it looks, and several weeks of rain preceding our vacation kept me from getting familiar with the camera settings that would be best for various types of night photos, so this was as much a learning experience as anything. And it's not really practical to take very long exposures without a tracking mount, so I was limited in what I could try. But besides a couple of wide star field pictures like the one above, I got several really good pictures of the moon.



It's what all the cool kids are doing, anyway. Oh, I also got some really good bird pictures with the new scope, but that's another post.
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* Heh, heh.