It's a great city in which you can do some serious chocolate shopping in. Paris just happens to be the best by a long shot.
While I missed the Salon du Chocolate this year, I have my calendar marked for next year and I won't be missing it again. Missing it ultimately just means I have to spend a lot of time on the metro to acquire the goods.
Really now, cry me a river. A river of chocolate tears.
Paris vs New York is a great graphic design blog that celebrates the similarities and differences between the two cities.
While I've met plenty of good friendly people here, this one sums up what your day-to-day interactions seem to boil down to. Good times.
Oh, All these Gray Skies! The monochrome, the dreary undertones, the gray-on-gray low clouds, the fog, and an unearthly amount of rain. It rarely drizzles for more than a couple hours. All the rest of the time, it downpours or hails.
I have embraced this color palate as my own. Goodbye to sunshiny summery brights or warm autumn tones. Let us immerse ourselves in a muted, w'ntry mix.
Hence, the lovely grays, purple-grays and white I chose for my Clockwork Scarf/Shawl.
Quick, mostly-garter stitch. My favorite kind of mindless knitting that goes to see films with me.
Another great pattern from Stephen West. Just when I think I have enough things to wear around my neck, he publishes another pattern that will leave you wanting more. I love this one lots. You can wrap it around your neck a few times, or drape it gracefully.
Lille is in the far north west of France in Nord-Pas de Calais, right on the border with Belgium. It has a reputation of being an artsy town and it makes for a nice day trip. We were there on a Sunday so it was kind of quiet. Like Paris, most places shutter on Sundays.
We headed to the main museum, the Palais des Beaux Arts. Lucky me, there was an exhibit called, "Fables of Flemish Landscapes", which was all Bosch and Brueghel paintings. This is one of my favorite genere of art history and they had quite the collection of bizarre and macabre works. I'm fascinated by them and especially Bosch, who looks like he might have taken psychedelics before putting brush to canvas.
Bosch paintings especially are vivid and terrifying, with a common theme of hell and limbo in most of them. This appeals to me greatly.
The details of the demons are just nightmarish and chilling.
It was obvious these painters were terrified of death and dying. Vice, vanity, piousness and exile.
The permanent collection was a good find as well.
Lille has a quaint town square. It was quiet, but the former borse had an interesting flea market going on, and we did eventually find a place to stop for bite.
The wind was pretty incredible...we were getting the remnants of Hurricane Sandy, which meant a lot of wind and hail storms. Even on the other side of the Atlantic, the giant storm let herself be known.
It's flat and it's wet.
There's a lot of farmland, dotted with small towns with their austere churches.
There's a lot of history here from the past hundred years. Lots of Great War cemeteries and battlefields.
I found a gunner pilbox in the middle of a town.
Everywhere we went, people asked us about the upcoming US election. The opinion all over Europe is very pro-Obama. One guy commented, "Everyone I meet from the states is voting for Obama. So who would vote for the other guy?". We could only conclude that the Other Guy's supporters just don't get out much.
We spent a night in Watou, where St. Berndardus is brewed. The brewery has a really cozy B&B attached to it if you don't mind the smell of malty hops invading your sleep.
Those tall post is where the hops are grown- they are all over this area and they call this the Hop Capital of Belgium. They had just had their hop-harvest, so the hop fields were a little bare.
Watou also had a fantastic little town square filled with good places to eat.
We had the best dinner of our trip at 't Hommelhof.
It was a fantastic find- they are making fresh, locally derived food in inventive ways, but not too fussy. I love places like this.
Brugge at night...
It's very quiet at night. The streets are more or less deserted, and it doesn't really seem like too many people actually live in the city center. It didn't feel unsafe at all- the worst we saw the whole trip was dog poo on the sidewalk, and other than that it was a squeaky clean place.
Amusingly, at 4am I got woken up by a loud, drunk American who was outside my window asking the world where is hotel was. It's easy to get lost in Brugges. If you like beer, it's also really easy to get drunk.
Bruges was important port city for ages. Here, there was a huge cloth and textiles industry. They still make really gorgeous lace and needlework in the traditional way.
Some of the interiors were incredible. While the churches aren't as flashy and huge as those in France, they made up for it in the detail and liberal application of color.
There was also fantastic food to be had. Aside from wonderful mussels and perfectly cooked frites, they had some very good restaurants to choose from. Lots of very fresh seafood and french-inspired cooking.
