Penmanfest - otherwise known as the Helen World Tour [6]

Week 6 Part 1

September 24

My second day in Bruges with nothing I had to do in a hurry so it was a nice chance to snooze in late and wander around organising my things for a bit. Breakfast was delivered to my door in a big basket: bread rolls, pastries, yoghurts, slices of cheese and cold meats, honey cakes, biscuits, chocolate bars and loads of different jams. Also there was a big jug of hot chocolate which I had ordered instead of tea or coffee - was I in for chocolate overload in Belgium!

The centre of Bruges is not large: it can be walked across in about half an hour I suppose but there is lots to see on the way. I peered into shop windows, trying not to buy anything heavy of course. And then took a look at St Saviour's Cathedral which was quite amazing - ornate but nicely done.

Sorting out my Paris ticket was easy and the ticket officer was very helpful, explaining how I had ten minutes to change trains in Brussels on the way. As it was so quick to cross the city diagonally, I decided to walk around the enveloping canal system, which makes a circle around the town instead, starting to the east. This took me through the lovely park of Minniewater, past some of the old medieval city gates and by some lovely old windmills. The weather was bright and sunny but there was a cold wind blowing from the north-east. The area is naturally very flat but from the raised area where the windmills stand I was able to take a photo of the spires and towers in the city.

After half a circuit, I stopped in one of the parks on the bank of a canal to eat some lunch and then headed back to my B&B for a rest and an afternoon read in the sunshine on my terrace.

When I was rested I went out again to find an internet café and catch up on some emails and to sort out plans for New Orleans and Toronto on chat. Hurricane Isadore has been creating havoc with my New Orleans plans as it looks like it will hit Louisiana on Thursday and my flight arrives on Friday. Two of my friends who were driving down from Ohio have had to cancel as they couldn't drive into a hurricane area. Another has also had to cancel as she has been forced to evacuate from Texas. But I'm hopeful that I can still get there and have a great Penmanfest weekend with my friend Rania.

Earlier in the day I had seen a little family of three blue and white china owls in a shop window, but unfortunately that shop was closed on Tuesdays. Since then I had religiously checked every souvenir shop but no more owls had been sighted until wandering home again I discovered a single owl in a shop, so now I have an owl souvenir from Bruges which is excellent!

I came home for dinner (mostly still left over breakfast <g>) and had a couple of glasses of Belgian beer which I had bought earlier and left in the fridge. My favourite was Dentergems Wit Bier which has a nice flavour.

Now I've caught up my journal, repacked most of my suitcase and it is time for some reading before bed.

September 25

After another huge breakfast (featuring as many forms of chocolate as the Belgians can think of) I was dropped at the train station in time for my train to Brussels then on to Paris.

The train journey was much easier now I was used to the trains and finding my way around. Brussels-Zuid is an excellent station as it has escalators for changing platforms - a wonderful invention for people with luggage weighing nearly half of their own weight.

The fast train from Brussels to Paris was quite flashy with special compartments and I had to work out how to read my carriage and seat from the ticket, with some help from a lovely Belgian couple. Everyone in Belgium (and Netherlands too) seems to speak English which makes it very easy although I feel sad that I do not know their languages. They are all very friendly and helpful too.

The BBC World News this morning had been full of crashes in stock markets and even more drastic for me, a strike on the Metro in Paris. Ah well, sounded like a good excuse to get a taxi to me. So on arriving at Gare du Nord I joined the queue and loaded all my gear into a taxi for my hotel in the Quatiere Latine. And was I glad I wasn't driving in Paris!! How everyone survives seems miraculous. No-one drives slowly and there is such a lot of noise and seeming chaos. I suppose it didn't help that they were all on the opposite side of the road to where I expected. But I buckled up my seatbelt and sat back taking deep, calming breaths until we arrived at my hotel, amazingly in a street that wasn't teeming with vehicles.

My room was lovely and I must thank Susan, the friend who recommended L'Hotel du Monge to me. I unloaded my gear and wandered out with a map in hand to see what I could find. The first thing I discovered was that the scale on the city map of Paris is slightly different to the one on the city map of Bruges.

About fifteen fascinating minutes walking I reached the Seine and crossed over to Ile de la Cite and Notre Dame.

I sat and read for half an hour in the Gardens of the Palace of Luxemburg, very pretty.

While wandering through the back streets on the way back to my hotel, I discovered Rue Mouffetard which had a lot of interesting restaurants and a pretty little square with a fountain. A nice place to head back to for dinner where I found a little Italian restaurant with pasta and pizzas. Fun to be in Paris eating Italian food! :-)

After dinner I returned to my room, checked for emails about the pending hurricane and made some plans for if I needed to find somewhere else to go if New Orleans airport was closed on Friday evening. The best Plan B involved arriving like a refugee at a piffle friend's place in Colorado and thankfully she was thrilled to provide succour should I need it.

September 26

Andrew's birthday so I sent an email off to him before breakfast. Then after a yoghurt (phew, no chocolate today) I walked off to check the railway station where I need to catch the train tomorrow at 5.22am (!) to get to Charles de Gaulle airport for my 7.40am flight.

Then to the Cluny Museum and spent a good couple of hours with their fascinating collection. It is a strange mix of medieval and roman artefacts as are the buildings themselves. The stunning medieval building was set on the site of a roman heated bath, a lot of which is now excavated and fits inside (and outside) the medieval building. The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries were a highlight but there are many other tapestries, carvings and sculptures to see. A collection of highly ornate 15th century wooden combs caught my eye, especially the ones with metal mirrors in them - amazing detailed work.

I learnt many interesting things during my walk: one being that French drivers only stop at crosswalks when they must to avoid hitting someone. Even when the walkers have a green light, the cars seem to weave their way through. And it is great fun to watch the police cars try to get around through the traffic with their sirens blaring.

After about four hours of walking, my feet were exhausted so I decided an afternoon read/sleep was a really good plan and headed home in the rain. Merde! Il pleut! Lucky I was wearing my rain jacket. Actually not so much lucky, I was wearing everything I could in layers and my scarf as it was quite cold and this was only autumn!

September 27

I had always considered this to be a bit of a write-off sort of day. It was going to be long and full of airports.

An early wake-up call at 4am helped me wake up, shower, have a quick yoghurt for early breakfast. I was out of my hotel by about 4.45am and walked the 20 mins to the railway station along deserted streets. The train was on time and had me at the airport station by 6am then I had to find the shuttle bus to the air terminal. Elisa had mentioned that Charles de Gaulle was not a favourite airport and I can see why. It looks a bit like a concrete space station gone wrong and obviously hasn't had any decorating done to it since the 1970s.

But it worked well enough to get me onto the right plane and although we left about 20 mins late we still managed to arrive on time in Heathrow. Onto another shuttle bus for the trip from Terminal 4 to Terminal 3 then check in for my flight to Miami which was due to leave at 9.40am. Here my hand luggage was opened and inspected plus I was checked to see if I was carrying any secret weapons as well as having to take off my shoes (wonder if they were looking for a shoe phone?). We were all boarded and ready to leave but for some reason sat around on the tarmac until 10.30am before actually leaving. No problem, I have books!

Again the delay didn't seem to effect our arrival time so I expect it was a deliberate one and designed to not get us to our destination too early. I had watched two movies and was bored by five hours into the eight hour flight. But there wasn't really much choice but to sit and watch the time to destination count down. It is nice to have individual TV monitors so that you can pick and choose movies, TV or just to watch the inflight map/details. Looking out of the window didn't offer much except blue sky, white fluffy clouds and blue sea.

The last 40 mins of the flight were very interesting though as we tracked down the Florida coast from about Fort Lauderdale and did a nice circuit pattern giving us great views of Miami, Key Biscayne, etc. It all looked very attractive from the air with long beaches, golf courses and tree surrounded houses along a series of canals. Temperature was supposed to be 32 deg C outside.

Once landed I had to go through immigration and customs, no problems with either just queues. Then I needed to find the domestic part of the terminal for my connecting flight to New Orleans. Checking in my suitcase became a major operation. Although it had already been through Charles de Gaulle and Heathrow, it was decided that it needed to be xrayed and instead of this happening behind the scenes I had to go with it to a waiting area. Apparently it set off warnings in the xray machine so I had to open it for the inspectors who discovered the problem was my dangerous looking umbrella (the one with the Underground map on it!). They were soon convinced that it was really an umbrella and I passed through to the next stage.

Here I had to unpack my notebook computer and also they took fingerprints from the computer case and checked them in a computer. I must be OK as I was allowed in again.

By this time I had started to understand why I had a 5 hour stopover in Miami airport. I had something to eat and requested my change in 25 cent pieces so I could phone Rania and let her know I was going to be on the plane without any hurricane problems. She advised that weather in New Orleans was sunshiny so it looks as though I have my good weather bubble back again.

By the time I reached New Orleans I was exhausted having been awake for 22 hours straight, although it was only 8pm in local time. Rania was there to meet me and we had a quick hot drink before I crashed to sleep, waking feeling much more alive about 7am.

Week 6 Part 2

September 28

After breakfast Rania and I spent a couple of enjoyable hours perusing her wonderful collection of books. Then it was time to watch her football team, The Tigers (Louisiana State University) playing on TV - a cross-cultural experience for me. Now I know a lot more about the rules of grid-iron football.

Rania has been preparing lovely food. For lunch we had toasted sandwiches made with potato bread, ham, cheese and red pepper. With it was a lovely salad with Rania's special salad dressing including mango pickle as a secret ingredient.

Next we took a tour around the Harvey area where Rania lives and visited the library where she works. Then some shopping where I found a Janet Evanovich book, 'Full House', not a Stephanie Plum one but worth a try anyway. And I discovered that everything can be done by 'drive-through' in US. There are even drive-through mail boxes and drive-through ATMs.

We met Rania's friend Laura at the movies to see Sweet Home Alabama, a lighthearted but entertaining film. Then Rania drove to a lovely Lebanese restaurant for dinner followed by a shopping trip to Barnes & Noble (open here until 11pm at night). Does anybody spot a Book theme here?

September 29

I spent some time on Rania's computer fine-tuning plans for Toronto and LA, then had some quiet Sunday morning time catching up on my reading till it was time to go out for brunch.

This was my first foray into the French Quarter of New Orleans and it looked very eclectic as we walked to Café du Monde to meet Laura then on to our restaurant, The Court of Two Sisters. The setting was magnificent: an old building with a beautiful garden courtyard. And the food was unbelievable. It was a buffet brunch, but there were so many choices of food that I was totally bewildered to start with. Eggs Benedict became my first choice (cooked individually for you) then lots of hot food: bacon, sausage, veal rolls, duck a l'orange, rice, roast turkey, etc. The plates were huge so I picked too much and struggled to eat it all.

Then there were desserts. I was a little more restrained here choosing some cornbread to try, some fresh fruit and only two cakes. All of this was washed down with champagne and orange.

We looked at the lovely architectural style of the houses in the French Quarter, found the cornstalk fence (wrought iron) and then walked down to look at the cathedral from the moonwalk walkway along the Mississippi.

September 30

Another beautiful day though with some clouds this time. There is another storm brewing called Lily but it won't be anywhere near New Orleans until Wednesday at the earliest.

I had "grits" for breakfast, microwave version, and was quite impressed. Another local delicacy tasted.

Rania had to go out for a couple of hours this morning so I stayed home and enjoyed organising some photos. Then we went out for lunch with Rania being very brave and letting me try driving on the "other" side of the road. Although I was very worried about how this would go, it was really much easier than I expected. I think the fact that I had some time to get used to being in the car when Rania was driving helped (and when Grada was driving in Netherlands too). I still want to get into the wrong side of the car though.

I managed to drive to the pancake restaurant and to Barnes & Noble without any problems and felt very proud of myself and confident that I could drive in Europe or US if I ever want to. I also drove to the post office and sent parcels of Australian things to the others who were due to be in New Orleans these few days but couldn't make it due to the hurricane Isidore scare.

After more shopping ( I only bought one Christmas present for someone and no books - promise!) we headed home and settled down for afternoon rests. Then I borrowed Rania's computer and caught up with some of the people I'm meeting in Toronto, including Jane who is collecting me at the airport. Jane was worried that she wouldn't recognise me but has now checked out some of my photos and feels happy that we will know each other.

The weather is much colder in Toronto but hopefully will be fine for our drive down to Stratford on Wednesday.