Gent and Brugge, day 1

Today Simone and I drove to Belgium for the weekend. I had booked us 2 nights in a hotel in Gent, where we would spent at least the first 2 days. On the way there we did a bit of bunny hopping with a Ferrari.

A car that can go very fast but (sadly) has to stick to speed limits of 100km/h... Lovely car nevertheless!

Checking in was easy and we even managed to park the car in the underground hotel parking. After ditching our gear in the hotelroom we set out and walked in to town.

Gent is a very old city and its centre was build in times of great wealth.

After the tiring drive (we had incredible amounts of rain) we had our first rest in the sun. Naturally I had to have some Belgian brew!

And a waffle!

Against all odds the sun came out and made us a beautiful afternoon.

Gent has a few wonderful canals. Some with houses standing in the water. Gent likes to call itself the "Venice of the North" but we all know that Amsterdam is the only real Venice of the North now, do we? ;-)

At the end of the afternoon we went back to our hotel room for a little rest and to freshen up a bit. This was the view to the right.

And the view straight ahead. Not bad!

We walked back in to town at dusk to find us a lovely restaurant where we had a wonderful dinner.

It was a lovely afternoon and evening!

The 13 stories

Amsterdam gets a lot of cruise ships like this one. Here it's floating next to a some 13 stories tall building...

It was a lovely, crisp, morning.

The book

Sun, after the rain, on my way home. I had a really nice day today.

At my birthday, Simone's mom gave me this book's 3 years younger version, from 1976. I didn't know they existed but there is one for every year ever since the sixties I belief. It has a bit of info on every car available during that year. Info includes things like the price, size, max. speed, No. of cylinders etc. So of course I wanted to have the 1973 version very badly and I found it 2 days ago, for sale online. It came in today!

From every model car it only shows 1 type, in the Mustang's case the cheapest luxury version; the 6 cyl. Grande. It sports a mere 100HP which is not much at all for this car. For those days it cost a small fortune of 22,572 guilders. Kinda nuts coz in the USA they cost about 3000 dollar!

The parcel

On the ferry in the morning. It was the little one again but it was too cold to sit outside...

My parcel from the USA arrived. It contains:
- Fuel cap
- Instrument cluster printed circuit
- Turn signal cam
- LED lights to replace some dash lights with

All this was made possible because of generous birthday donations from my friends. Thanks guys!

The short cable

The ugly plant in front of my window makes very pretty flowers one week a year...

At the back of Central Station they have started building the spaces for shops. This will be a great extension I think.

After dinner I went to my car to put on the new battery clamps but then I decided to turn the battery around for 180 degrees but then the plus cable isn't long enough so I removed it and now I gotta look for a new one.

Black and white

It was one of those black and white days today where the sky is white all day long and you notice hardly any bright colours outside. It can be quite depressing for some folks I imagine.

OK, there was a little bit of blue sky...

Food, cars and coffee

I baked an egg for Milan this morning. Since I don't eat egg myself I had only once before made a scrambled egg. This was my first ever normal baked egg. I think it looks lovely. Almost wanted to eat it myself. But I'm scared I'll puke :-/

After some chores I sat down in the garden to enjoy the few hours of semi-warm weather outside. I heated up the lovely tomato soup that Simone made yesterday and I bought some nice buns and I had my favourite literature ;-)

When Simone came home I gave her a little present that I went to buy just before. She's wanted one of these coffee makers for soooo long now. She was very happy with it and now she thinks I'm crazy ;-)
We tried it twice today and I have to say it does make a fab cuppa joe! Also the creamer is sweeeeet. Lovely cappuccino!