Brugge, Belgium

This my friends, is Brugge. It is often billed as the "Venice of the north" - for good reason as you will see in the photo's. It was my second visit... and Marina's first. It was a short trip, via Eurostar and a commuter train, staying just one night in the city, but we made the most of it. Brugge is definitely one of my favorite city's in Europe, purely from a perspective of scale and charm. Enjoy the photo's!

Bordeaux, France

Late in May, Marina and I spent a truly memorable 4 days in Bordeaux touring the vineyards and chateaus. We stayed at Chateau Pitray, an amazing chateau built in the Victorian Gothic style, that is surrounded by a park of century-old oak and cedar trees and vineyards. Pitray has been owned by the same family for the last six hundred years and is filled with family heirlooms and artifacts! Just by luck we were the only guests at the chateau for all 4 nights, so it was just us and the owners! They were extremely gracious and gave us a tour, letting Marina play the old piano and me peruse the century old books in the library.

Here are a few pictures of the chateau... no I am not kidding.





The first night we expected silence but were greeted with a strange symphony of beeping noises. It sounded like people hitting the wrong key on a computer keyboard all across the meadow outside our window. Come to find out it was little frogs! Marina was annoyed when I continued to imitate them for weeks after our trip. Boop! ... Boop! ...

Here are some pictures of the surrounding fields and vineyards - beautiful!

One day we made a trip into the town of Bordeaux and did a bit of wondering. Here are a few photos:

The next day we drove around the region and stopped to visit the winerys and chateaus. It was a good time... we couldn't taste too much wine as I had to drive - but it was still amazing!

Chateau Pitray is not a chateau in name only - it actually continues to produce wine of its own label! We were lucky enough to be there for the bottling of the current years vintage, so we were given a tour of the process.

Some of the vintage is labeled and shipped right away, but a portion is kept and further aged in the bottles. It is labeled right before it is shipped so that the labels don't get dirty while the aging takes place.

Here is my souvenir! I wish... this big boy was being shipped to Beijing for an Olympic kick-0ff party!

Lanzarote?!

Lanzarote is situated just 79 miles off the coast of Africa and is the most easterly of the Canary Islands. The island is 37 miles long and 12 miles wide, making it the fourth largest island in the Canaries.

As with the other Canary Islands, Lanzarote is Volcanic in origin. Due to the recent eruptions during the 18th and 19th Centuries, many parts of Lanzarote appear to be from another world, often described as 'lunar' or 'Martian'.The dry climate (and lack of erosion) means that the Volcanic Landscape appears much as it did just after the eruptions.

Despite the Volcanic nature of the island, Lanzarote has several beautiful white beaches such as at Playa Blanca and Papagayo. (http://www.discoverlanzarote.com/)

Marina and I went to Lanzarote with a relaxing holiday in mind and we weren't disappointed; there wasn't much to do besides sit by the pool or look at lava formations! Nevertheless, we did a bit of both and managed to bring home a couple of sunburns!

Here is a view from our hotel balcony:


Here I am at the beach. The water was too cold for my taste so I stuck with the pool!

One of the days we took an excursion to the Montañas del Fuego (Fire Mountains). The Fire Mountains were created between 1730 and 1736 when more than 100 volcanoes, covering more than 50 km², rose up and devastated this part of the island (including several villages). In 1968 the area was declared a national park, Parque Nacional de Timanfaya.

In the middle of the national park there is a tourist center where they perform "experiments" or demonstrations about the temperature of the island just below the surface (temperatures just a few metres below the surface reach between 400°C and 600°C). Here you see what happens when they pour water down a pipe that goes about 12 feet into the ground. They also have a restaurant at the center where they cook the food over an open hole in the ground using geothermal heat - no fire necessary!

Somehow they manage to have agriculture on the island, and we stopped to visit the "vineyards" on the way back to the hotel. They somehow use a "waterless" irrigation method; essentially the plant beds are covered with a thick layer of lava pebbles, overnight the pebbles somehow capture condensation and it trickles to the plant, the pebbles protect the soil from the sun during the day, and small half circle walls are built around each plant to protect it from the wind. Magic!Somehow they manage to grow enough grapes to squeeze out commercial production of a sweet white wine.

Here is a photo of Marina soaking up a bit of the sunshine at the vineyard:

Here is a picture of "emerald cove"... or something like that! There is some sort of green stone in the rock that causes the water caught in the cove to appear green.

If I didn't know better I would think that some construction equipment had a radiator leak!

... and that my friends was Lanzarote.