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Published: July 18th 2013
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8:35 up and on the bus for Brussels today via a tulip farm and some windmills, apparently, so this should be pretty cool! We're only a few minutes out of town and have already managed to see a number of huge wind turbines, as well as a proper old windmill. Several old windmills. The Netherlands are definitely living up to their windmill-y stereotype, that's for sure. We also passed a place called Baby Dump, which provoked a lot of curiosity. I don't know if we'll ever find out what it was. I just realised that this will be one of the few countries where I have not set foot in a proper graveyard/cemetery. Hmm... A little disappointed, actually. I doubt I'll manage in Belgium, though, either, so I guess my graveyard cred is going to have to suffer a little bit. Yes, I just used the phrase graveyard cred.
10:36 So the tulip farm turned out to be a peace lily (anthurium?) grow op, which is kinda cool. It was sort of fascinating to see how they do flowers commercially for sale across Europe. So much of the place was automated, with lots of lilies traveling around on their own down the conveyor belts and such, seemingly at random, but very much controlled. Let's face it, though, the best part of the tour was the plastic bag baggie things they made us wear in order to avoid contaminating the place. What I did notice, however, was that a lot of the signs in the place were in Polish as well as Dutch. Brings up interesting questions around foreign workers, European migration in a period of economic distress, etc. Or maybe I'm just overthinking things. Anyway, the flowers were lovely and it was a nifty stop.
10:40 Driving past Rotterdam right now, the largest port in Europe. The cranes stretch for miles, hauling their containers and such. It's a pretty impressive industrial, site.
15:01 Just finished up at a bunch of windmills called the Kinderdijk (Children's Dike). 19 windmills, some brick, some made of thatch, all from the 1700s. It was pretty cool knowing that they're still part of the network that keeps the Netherlands dry (a lot of the country is below sea level and it's the system of dikes and pumps that keeps things dry, with the windmills moving water up by steps about 5 feet at a time. I had assumed for whatever reason that the windmills were like the North American type and served a more foodstuff-y purpose. Not entirely sure why I thought that, but it's actually kind of nice to find out I was totally wrong about something!
Lunch was at a nearby restaurant where they served us the giant Dutch-style pancakes. I had bacon in mine. It was delicious. The bacon. The pancake was, well, a pancake. We're back on the road to Bruxelles, now, though. We have just discovered that the bus has wifi, so I was hoping to be able to post on the fly, but the wifi is super slow. Like, Arctic-level slow. So I have given up for now and will continue to update when I get to hotel wifi and such.
18:15 We made it into Brussels around 17h00, checked into our hotel (literally just steps from the Cathedral and the main square, which was lovely), and I set out to wander. Visited the cathedral again, which brought back memories from when I was here many years ago, especially one crucifix in particular that I remember being astounded by when I was 16 years old that doesn't quite seem as edgy now as it did then. It's amazing what a difference 15 years can make in a person's perception.
Dinner was in a restaurant right on the edge of the Grand Place (the main square in the city) called La Rose Blanche. The entire group packed ourselves onto the 2nd (translation for North Americans: 3rd) floor, overlooking the square, and settled in for a three-hour meal with a salad course, main course, cheese course, and dessert, accompanied by wine and champagne.
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