June 24, 2024

Selcouth Chronicles Week 24

Hello family and friends! Welcome to week 24 of the Selcouth Chronicles.

Week 24: June 16 - June 22

June 17: Ghent ->🚂 Brussels

June 19: Brussels -> 🚂 London 

BELGIUM AND ENGLAND

Highlights: Exploring Ghent, Castle Gravensteen’s humorous audio guide, Belgian fries in Ghent, shoes as collateral, canal tour of Ghent, local chocolatier in Brussels, Sherlock Holmes Museum, Big Ben, St.James Park, The Shard, Much Ado About Nothing at Globe Theatre, Tate Modern, Borough Market, Tower of London, Gunpowder Plot, Tower Bridge rising

Caitlin:

This week started off with Father’s Day in Ghent, except in Ghent the holiday had already passed, so the celebrating was ours alone. Nobody is more worthy of celebration than Sean, who is an amazing dad and partner. For the past six months he’s been balancing a fast-paced travel schedule with working full-time, so we wanted to be sure that we had a fun day planned to show how much we appreciate him! 

We started with a walking scavenger hunt tour of Ghent, which is a vibrant university and canal city between Brugge and Brussels. If Brugge is an elegant aristocrat then Ghent is her irreverent younger sibling. After all the running around on our hunt we stopped for some amazing Belgium fries (possibly the best I’ve ever had) and a bite of chocolate before heading for our scheduled entrance to Castle Gravensteen, one of Ghent’s greatest treasures. At this point in the trip, we’ve had countless excellent audio tours, but this was the first one that was both informative and laugh-out-loud funny. After the castle we made our way through town, via Graffiti Street, and to a pub that Sean had been interested in for its special system of collecting collateral before issuing your drinks… more on that later! We had just enough time to make it back to the hotel to freshen up before running to our dinner reservations at a local Belgian restaurant. As it turns out, we couldn’t have picked a better place than Ghent to celebrate Sean, because he was thoroughly enamored with the city. 

On Monday we had to move on, but we took the morning for a bit more walking in town and a canal tour. Before leaving we had fries (yep. again.) and waffles before heading back to the hotel for our bags and catching a train to Brussels. We had just enough time to settle in at our hotel, head out for dinner, and take a short stroll before heading back to the hotel to work on the newsletter and head to bed.

On Tuesday we opted for a slow start, because a hard rain made a leisurely stroll around the city less appealing. We opted to catch up on a few things before heading out for a guided walking tour of Brussels. It was a great way to tour the city, and allowed us to cover a lot of ground quickly! Afterwards, we picked up some goodies from a local artisan chocolatier who is the official supplier to the royal family, and went to dinner at a Romanian restaurant. Brussels is notable as the capital city of both Belgium and the EU, but I have to say that (perhaps due to its stronger affiliation with business and politics) it lacks the charm of the rest of the country. I felt the same way when I visited 20 years ago. We had a pleasant enough visit, but honestly, it reaffirmed my long-held opinion that if you love Brussels it’s only because you haven’t been anywhere else in Belgium.  

Our reason for stopping in Brussels was because it’s one of only a few places where you can catch a train directly to London, which we did the following morning. Once settled into our London hotel, the kids and I took a long walk through the neighborhood to the Sherlock Holmes Museum, which was small but fun. I had looked up a few barber shops in the area and managed to convince James that it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world for him to get a trim. Sean didn’t have time to meet us for dinner, so before heading back to the hotel the three of us stopped for some tasty organic pasta and enjoyed strolling the edge of Regent’s Park.

Thursday was a marathon! Sean left early to meet colleagues at his company’s London office. The kids and I headed out with vague plans to visit a few spots and return for more the next day, but somehow once we got rolling we couldn’t stop! We took the Tube to Buckingham Palace, then spent some time meandering and relaxing on the grass at Saint James’s Park. Then we headed to Trafalgar Square, which was mostly obstructed by construction fencing - boo! We had a fun lunch nearby, then marched on past the Horse Guards and Downing Street on our way to see Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and the Houses of Parliament. Still feeling good, we decided to walk across Westminster Bridge and make our way along the southern bank of the Thames. We passed the London Eye but were deterred by the massive lines and our plans for another height-based attraction later. We enjoyed being able to stop at fun spots like a book market and a few shops as we made our way towards The Shard, where we were meeting Sean at 6pm. 

It was our second time up to the top, and we weren’t expecting to stay long but got engaged in an interesting conversation with one of the London Experts. So engaging, in fact, that after having lots of spare time I suddenly looked at my watch and realized that if we didn’t leave the building immediately we would be late for the performance at the Globe Theatre that we had booked for the evening. We had to speed through the streets to make it, but we jogged up to the theater with only a few minutes to spare, and just managed to grab our cushions and make it to our seats before the play started. Much Ado About Nothing was a perfect introduction to Shakespeare for the kids, and the actors were able to convey the humor in the writing that can elude first-time readers of the books. It was a big hit with all of us, but by the time we took the subway back to our hotel it was well after 11, which meant that the kids and I had been out and about (and mostly on our feet) for over 13 hours! Abby and James passed out immediately.

After our late night we slept in until 8:45, and slowly made our way down to breakfast. Sean didn’t have morning meetings, so we were able to go as a family to the Tate Modern. I had been wanting to return since our visit nine years ago to see the Rothko room, in which there are huge paintings in a twilight setting that invites visitors to sit, relax, and take in the artist’s work. Last time I visited, James was 4 and Abby was 1. By the time I found the correct room, Abby was just waking up from a nap in her stroller and I left the room shortly after arriving to avoid disturbing others. I was looking forward to visiting with older kids to appreciate the room fully, but unfortunately the paintings were on loan to a museum in Paris! I missed out on my main goal, but we all still enjoyed our visit to the museum. I especially like the Tate because the collection is noticeably more balanced than most museums in terms of gender and race, and they have made big efforts to increase their non-western art. Though it may not have been my favorite piece aesthetically speaking, the work that resonated most for me was Babel 2001, a take on the Tower of Babel for the technology era. The artist built a tower of analog radios from the 1920s onward, and tuned them to different frequencies. It was supposed to address the idea of “information overload and failed communication” that we now experience with our excessive exposure to technology. I stood in the room with all the dissonant voices and sounds. There was too much going on to process it all at once and I couldn’t help but think, “Yes! This is exactly what that feels like.”  Too much, too fast. It was uncanny.

After the museum, we all went to Borough Market for a late lunch, which I had fond memories of visiting on our first trip to London. In addition to a traditional market, it has excellent food vendors and it’s a delicious spot to grab a bite to eat. The only problem is deciding which place to order from! Sean had to leave quickly to make it back to the hotel for meetings, but James and Abby and I were able to take our time. We were feeling full and ready to head out… but then we passed by a crumble shop on the way, and the smell was so good that we couldn’t resist getting in line for an apple crumble to share. Then we stopped by a souvenir shop for Abby and hopped on the Tube to go back to the hotel. We were so full we didn’t need dinner!

On Saturday our first stop was the Tower of London, and we were sure to make the Crown Jewels our priority, as it always has a long line to enter. No photos allowed, unfortunately, but the array of treasures belonging to the crown was beautiful! We had time to see the ravens, and explore the walls and some of the exhibits before heading out to our next visit: The Gunpowder Plot. This is a relatively new venue which is an immersive experience that lets you play a part in the Gunpowder Plot of November 1605. It uses an elaborate set, actors, and even some VR to create the experience, and it was definitely a fun way for the kids to learn about this bit of British History! By the time we emerged, we were ready for an early dinner at a traditional English pub. James wanted to walk across Tower Bridge before heading to the hotel, and the timing was perfect because we arrived in time to nearly front-row spots to view the bridge being raised for a ship. This happens several times a day, but it was fun to experience it up close. After crossing, we made our way along the river to admire the HMS Belfast, then took the Tube back to our hotel to pack up for our departure the next day. Time is going too fast!

Abby:

I always thought that Shakespeare’s plays were very dramatic and serious. The dramatic part is true, but this week we watched Much Ado About Nothing and it was very funny! We were lucky to be able to see the play at the Globe Theatre, presented in the way that Shakespeare would have written it for.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the original theater. The first one was built in 1599, not far from where the current theater is. The original one burned down in 1613, when a spark from a cannon in the play Henry VIII hit the thatched roof and set the whole thing on fire! Luckily, nobody died, but there was a slight injury when one man’s pants were lit on fire, which was put out with a bottle of beer. A new theater was built in 1614, and it was used until 1642, when the Puritans shut all the theaters in London down because they thought they were not decent. There was another version that lasted from 1909-1994, but is now a different theater.

The current Globe Theatre, where I went, was opened in 1997. It looks like a circle, but it’s actually an icosagon, which is a 20-sided polygon. 🤯 I learned that it is the only thatch-roofed building in the whole city of London, because since the Great Fire of 1666 (a massive fire that destroyed more than 13,000 houses and other buildings) there has been a law against thatched roofs. They had to get special permission from the government to have a thatched roof like the original. 

Inside the theater, there are three levels of seating, plus standing room people to watch from the ground in front of the stage. If you get a seat, the rows are tiered, which was helpful for me because I’m short and it helped me see over the people in front of me. They aren’t seats like you would find in a modern theater though; they’re long wooden benches. You can rent cushions to keep your bottom from getting sore by the end of the play, which is what we did. I said there was a thatched “roof,” but it’s really only along the outer edges of the top. Back when Shakespeare’s plays were first performed, they needed sunlight to see during the performances because they didn’t have artificial light. Because it is an open structure, we brought jackets just in case we got cold!

Seeing Much Ado About Nothing was a very nice experience, and I liked being able to see it the way that people would have seen plays in Shakespeare’s time. The writing and the actors made us all laugh, and if you look up the plot, you’ll see by the end why it’s called Much Ado About Nothing! The play was very good, and I would definitely recommend it to people.

Sean: 

As you might have noticed from our highlights last week, Belgium worked its way into our hearts quickly. For me, Ghent in particular was a delight, as I found the way it didn’t take itself too seriously, but still had some beautiful sights, a wonderful combination. Though we only had one full day there, I have many stories to tell!

Ghent’s location, as has been the case with so many European cities, was dictated by the water. Ghent began at the crossing of two rivers, Rivers Scheldt and Leie. This led to significant prosperity for the city, and at one point the city rivaled some of the most powerful cities in Northern Europe. At the confluence of the two rivers is the heart of the city. We came upon it on Sunday, our only full day in the town, and it was beautiful. The St. Michael’s Bridge arcs over the river, with the St Michael's Church to the side, and the three towers of Ghent lined up to the left. In the center of the bridge is a lamp post with a bronze statue of St. Michael slaying the dragon. The church, though still a picturesque piece of the area, was meant to be towering over everything else, but the planned 134-meter tall tower only ever made it to 46 meters, due to a lack of funds. It turns out this was fortuitous, as the ground couldn’t have supported the weight of the fully built tower anyway.

Across the bridge from the church are the three towers of Ghent: St Nicholas’ Church, the Belfry and St Bavo’s Cathedral. Atop the Belfry is where you will see the Ghent Dragon, the mascot of the city. Rolled up into the dragon is also the long running (mostly friendly) rivalry with their neighbor to the north, Bruges. The legend says that around 1270, a canal began being dug between the trading hub of Bruges and the prosperous town of Ghent. The people of Ghent were worried that this would dry up their connection to the sea, so while the workers from Bruges spent the day digging, the people of Ghent would spend the evening filling the canal back up! What is known to be true is that after a century of digging the canal was getting very close to Ghent, and the people of Ghent rebelled, resulting in casualties. This paused the work on the canal for some time, and when the Count of Bruges decided to resume, he also created new trading rules that negatively impacted Ghent. While still drunk from festivities related to the Holy Blood Procession, the Ghent army marched on Bruges, leading to the Battle of Beverhoutsveld. It is presumed that it is during this battle that the dragon on the Belfry was stolen from Bruges and brought to Ghent. For the canal, this put an end to it until 1613, when the two cities mutually agreed to build the canal. After all, Ghent had lost sea access by this point due to silting anyway.

Just on the other side of the river from the towers is Ghent’s well-preserved castle. The Castle of the Counts, also called Gravensteen, is a medieval castle that still has a moat and working defense systems. We learned that the only successful “siege” of the castle came from a group of college students in the 1940s who were unhappy about the price of beer going up. The band of students took over the castle for a few hours, pelting police with fruit, before being ousted. This is still celebrated in the town every year in November. The castle obviously embraced this colorful history, as we discovered when we did the audio guided tour. They hired Wouter Deprez, one of Flanders’ most well known comedians, to record the tour. This led to a story-driven walk through the castle, reminding us that while knights used to be forever vigilant, today the best we can expect is to check the best-by date on our yogurt. That and the stop at the castle's “toilet”, which was just a seat with a hole over the moat, helped ensure one of the most memorable stops of the whole trip.

To end our whirlwind tour of Ghent, we stopped at a local establishment that is known for serving over 500 Belgian beers. The bar is called Dulle Griet, and it’s a relatively small pub off the Vrijdagmarkt, where the statue of Jacob van Artevelde stands to guide patrons to the good beers of Belgium. The reason the Dulle Griet is a must-stop attraction isn’t for the quantity of beers, but for the barter you must do for one of them. Their MAX beer is served in a unique glass, and as many were “wandering off,” they decided to require a collateral. They chose: one shoe. That’s right, to order the MAX beer from the Dulle Griet, you had to give them a shoe, which will be returned once you give them the glass back. This perfectly captures the slightly ridiculous side of Ghent that made me fall in love with it.

James:

When I first went to The Shard I was four years old. I had been inspired by the children's book Romeo’s View from The Shard, a story about a fox named Romeo who lived on the top floor of the building during its construction. Dad had gotten me the book a few years earlier on a business trip to London, so we took a page from Romeo’s book and went to The Shard when our family was in town together for the first time. At that time, I was fascinated by the views and the look of the building, but I was too young to fully appreciate what makes The Shard so impressive.

Construction began in March, 2009, and the building was completed in 2012. It was designed by a man named Renzo Piano, and is 306 meters tall - that’s 72 floors! It is covered in 11,000 panels of glass; if you were to take all of that glass and put it in a perfect square, it would cover an area of 56,000 square meters. To put that in terms that are easy to imagine, it’s about 8 entire football fields of glass. To reach the top, you have to take two lifts (that’s the British word for elevators), which can move more than 30 floors in 6 seconds. That’s so fast that it made our ears pop! The ceiling inside the lift is a special screen that plays a video of a day passing from The Shard’s roof. It’s there so that if you’re claustrophobic you can watch the video from beginning to end in the time it takes to reach your floor, and it will help you to not feel so closed in. One final fact for all the eco-friendly people out there: 95% of The Shard is made of recycled materials!

And what about the little fox, Romeo? That book was actually based on a true story. In 2011, he snuck into The Shard, probably through the central stairwell. He set up a little home there and survived on scraps left by the construction workers who were there each day. The higher-ups finally realized that a fox living in their new building was unsafe, and decided to remove him. Unfortunately for Animal Control, he was a very crafty little guy, and it took two full weeks to capture him. He was finally brought to an animal care center before being released back into the wild streets of London. He is now the official mascot of The Shard, and at home we even have an adorable plushie of him in a construction worker vest. You’ve got to love him!

Aside from Romeo, one thing I remembered well from our first trip was the special telescopes that allowed me to locate famous landmarks and identify them on the screen. Unfortunately, the telescopes have been removed. Instead, The Shard now employs special London Experts to talk about the building and London’s city history with visitors. We asked one of them a few questions, and that turned out to be a wonderful idea. Michael, our expert, was full of interesting stories. For example, he told us that the cannons of the HMS Belfast, a light cruiser that saw heavy action in WWII, were positioned by the engineers who restored it so that if they were fired the shells would hit their hotel, which had served them some questionable food that gave them all terrible diarrhea. You don’t read that kind of story in a history book! Michael also told us about The Shard’s special bathrooms, where the stalls have floor to ceiling windows that overlook the city. It’s apparently a very popular filming spot for people who want to post videos on social media. Luckily, they have shades that can be lowered for people who aren’t comfortable with a huge window next to them as they use the bathroom. 🚽🤣

I’m so glad I got to relive this amazing experience so that I can have fresh memories, more stories, and a better understanding of the tallest building in Western Europe!

See you next week!

Sean, Caitlin, James, and Abby

Catching up? Read week 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, or 23.