Category Archives: Museums

Mercedes Benz Museum in Stuttgart

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Day 39     Wednesday, October 8, 2025

Bob visits the Mercedes-Benz museum, here is his report.

The museum is on 9 levels and has a great range of vehicles through the years.  I was there for 4 hours!

Karl Benz built this 3-wheeled vehicle in 1885 and patented it in 1886. It is the world’s first gas powered automobile.  

Gottlieb Daimler built this motorized 4-wheeled carriage in 1886. Benz and Daimler built their cars independently but close to Stuttgart. Daimler and his partner Wilhelm Maybach (name of the top of the line Mercedes-Benz) first invented a high-speed gasoline engine to fit this new mode of transportation. The engine was called a “grandfather’s clock” because of its design. 

Daimler also invented the first gasoline powered motorcycle called a ‘riding car’ in 1885. It had a top speed of 12 km/h.  It used the same “grandfather clock” motor as the car.

In 1893 Karl Benz built his first 4-wheeled automobile that used a kingpin steering system that allowed the 2 front wheels to turn with a different turning radius, making the vehicles safer to drive. Benz later added a second cylinder to the motor using a ‘boxer’ design with the pistons horizontal rather than vertical, whereas Daimler added a second cylinder in a V-shaped pattern.

A 1902 Mercedes Simplex. This is the oldest Mercedes model still in existence. Notice that the steering wheel is still on the right side. This was so the driver could see the ditch. The steering wheel was later moved to the left side as a bigger concern was the speed of the on-coming traffic.

The Mercedes model was named after the daughter of a salesman who pressured Daimler to build better racing motors around the turn of the century.

Both companies were innovators. In 1923 Benz & Cie started production of diesel engines.  In 1921 Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft added superchargers to their engines. Later in 1926, Benz & Cie, and Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft merged under the name Daimler-Benz AG. This 1928 Tourenwagen, a supercharged 180 hp vehicle, is an example of their merger. 

A 1936 Mercedes-Benz 500K Roadster that is worth about 1.3 million euros today.

Of course, a Gullwing from 1955. The structural frame was too high to permit normal doors.  Today’s value is $6.8 million.

And finally to end the day, a Mercedes-AMG GT concept car, with 816 hp.Before you exit the museum, you have to walk by the current models. For 232,000 euros you can drive away in this Mercedes-AMG GT63. AMG is the racing arm of Mercedes-Benz.

Must be a convention of Lederhosen models happening in town!

Frankfurt to Stuttgart, Germany

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Day 37     Monday, October 6, 2025

On our drive to Stuttgart we stop at Worms, Germany. Worms is pronounced Vurmz. We passed through this huge gate on the bridge over the Rhine River.

We find a place to park on the street but have to move to a parkade because the street machine won’t take our euros…big surprise!  St Peter’s Cathedral is our first stop but we can’t find the door to get inside!  

In our walk around the church I see steps leading into what looked like a private area, but I take a look anyways and it is actually a public garden so we go inside. When I see something like this I am so curious. I wonder what it is, why it is there and where does it lead to?

Turns out this garden marks the location where Martin Luther refused to recant his beliefs at the Diet of Worms in 1521. This was the beginning of the Protestant Church and its split from the Catholic Church. These large bronze shoes in Worms’ Heylshof Park shoes are part of a 2017 memorial sculpture, which allows visitors to symbolically “step into Luther’s shoes” at the spot where he stood and defended his doctrines.

 A ‘Diet’ was an assembly or meeting of authorities to make decisions on important matters. The Diet of Worms of 1521 was convened to determine how political and religious authorities should respond to Martin Luther’s teachings. Because the Diet was held in Worms, it is know as the Diet of Worms which still makes me smile because of course I think of eating worms.

We leave the garden and go back to the church, passing a kindergarten with this colourful mosaic mural.

St Peters Cathedral is another cathedral that escaped destruction during the war.  Curious, I did a bit of of research and learned that the high belltowers and steeples of cathedrals were used by the Allies as navigational landmarks and that sometimes military planners made conscious efforts to protect major cultural and religious sites. So perhaps not divine intervention after all?

We do finally find small side door that allows us entrance to the church. There is an art display in the cathedral by a group called Atelierblau.  There are some really interesting pieces. Unfortunately I couldn’t find the names of the artists or the works they created. Here are a few of them.

The sign on the trunk reads “A thousand roses for a thousand lives”.

There are several large sculptural pieces that are from the church cloister.  I think they were placed inside the church as a method of keeping them safe from damage.

Built with red sandstone between the years 1130 and 1181, the church has a relatively simple interior……except for the choir and altar.
Bob noticed a side entrance to the crypt which contains the tombs of early rulers from 990 to 1040 AD.
Outside I see what appears to be ancient graffiti.

This fountain is at the end of part of the old town wall.

More graffiti, only on a tree this time.

This little bird sculpture with its huge beak, ragged wings and stubby body caught our eye…we both really liked it.

The Luther Monument is a group of statues. Martin Luther stands surrounded by bronze statues of the individuals that supported him. Plaques of the towns that supported Luther and the Protestant Reformation are placed on the walls of the monument.

This monument is in a lovely park near the Cathedral. There is a model of the statue with information in Braille, which was unique.
Back on the road I finally manage to get a photo of the Ausfahrt sign…which simply means Exit. I remember that we found this quite hilarious on our first trip to Germany with our daughter many years ago.

Next stop is Heidelberg where we are going to visit Heidelberg Castle that Bob says is like Versailles. We have a hard time finding the entrance to the funicular, even using Google Maps!  Finally I notice a small picture of a train on the wall of what looks like the entrance to a mall…we only walked past it two times! The part of the journey we take is all underground.

We walk to the castle but all we see is ruins…turns out Bob mixed up his castles!  It is fine though as this looks interesting anyways.  There is an in depth tour through the ruins in an hour and a half but we decide to just wander and see what we can.  This gate was built in one night by King Frederick V for his wife as a birthday present.

Our funicular ticket gives us access to the courtyard, the German Pharmacy Museum, and the Big Wine Barrel.  We walk through the gate to the courtyard…

…and we are greeted with views of the ruins of what must have been a very impressive castle

Walking through the doorway in the above photo we arrive on a huge balcony overlooking the Rhine River with views of Heidelberg below.A view of the ruins as seen from the balcony.

It is cold out so we go inside to see the Big Wine Barrel.  It is pretty impressive and I take this photo and then walk around the corner while Bob is inspecting the barrel. I come back and tell him “You need to come and see the BIG Wine Barrel!

Here it is!

This wine barrel held 220,000 liters of wine. The stairs I am standing on lead to a platform above the barrel that was likely used as a dance floor! 

Last stop is the German Apothecary Museum. It is warm inside, which I really appreciate.  Aspirin was a commercially sold product in 1889. 

This chest of homeopathic medicines from 1890 contains 312 vials of homeopathic remedies.

What is it about chests with lots of little drawers that I find so appealing?

Of course, ground unicorn horns were in big demand as a cure for ailments such as fever, plaque, poisoning convulsions and epilepsy! Unicorn horns were just long tusks from narwhals or other animals but they were an expensive medication reserved for royalty and the very rich.

An early distillery…

…bunsen burners and a telescope from 1780.We had such a hard time finding the entrance to the funicular and wondered where this castle was located…well, on our way back to the parkade I Iooked up…and there it was!  We both laughed, but then we couldn’t find the entrance to the parkade!  We looked everywhere and finally walked down the out ramp, and there was the door to the exit.  We checked it out and the stairs outside were right beside the ramp we just walked down…no sign or markers though!

Back on the road to stuttgart…and it is raining again.

Jewish Museums in Frankfurt, Germany

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Day 36     Sunday, October 5, 2025

I have a much needed quiet day and Bob visits two Jewish Museums in Frankfurt. He is writing today’s post.

At the entrance to the Jewish Museum is a sculpture that symbolizes the uprooting of the Jewish community during WWII. Of the 30,000 Jews in Frankfurt at the start of the war, 13,000 died in German concentration camps, many were uprooted and only 150 remained after the war.

Amazingly most of the St. Nicholas Cathedral survived the bombings in WWII. 80% of the city was either destroyed or badly damaged.

In November 1938, 1400 synagogues were vandalized and burnt  by the Nazi regime, including the Borneplatz Synagogue.  

I was surprised to learn that Anne Frank and her family lived in Frankfurt before 1933. The grandmother moved to Basel, and other family members moved to Paris and London. Anne Frank’s family moved to Amsterdam. In 1942 the family went into hiding until August 1944 when the family was discovered and deported to Auchwitz.

The grandmother kept these treasures.  For one of her birthdays Anne was given a gift certificate for 2 books.  This was her favourite chair.   

After WWII Anne’s father (the only family survivor of the war) published her diary (The Annex).  He returned to Amsterdam in 1960 to view the family’s hiding place. This is the father’s copy of the book, later titled  “The Diary of Anne Frank”.

In 1460, Frankfurt City Council set up the Jewish Quarter to house all Jews.  By 1700 up to 3000 people lived here.  The remains of 5 houses have been saved in the 2nd museum I visited.   There were a number of artifacts uncovered. The most interesting is this 16th century wedding belt. The belts of the bride and groom were tied together during the wedding ceremony as a symbol of their eternal bound.

Mainz, Germany and Gutenburg Bible

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Day 35    Saturday,  October 4, 2025

It is a 45 minute drive to Mainz, and Bob has several items on our ‘must see’ agenda. First stop is the market. The flowers at these markets are always so beautiful and very reasonably priced.

The main sculpture in the main square (market) of Mainz is the Heunensäule, or Hay Column. It is a 1,000-year-old sandstone column with a bronze casing, depicting various symbols of Mainz’s history and culture like a fool’s cap and bishop’s miter. It is in the market square in front of the Mainz Cathedral. 

I like this wishing well and we both toss in a coin and make our wishes.

We both like the interestingly shaped squash…we might have to try growing some next year.

We have seen these coloured eggs in the grocery stores and wondered what they were. Turns out they are hard boiled eggs that are coated in a tinted resin that keeps them fresh for months! The colour helps to identify them as being hard boiled.

Gorgeous sunflowers!  I am definitely planting some of them in our garden next year.  They are so cheerful. Next stop in the Mainz Cathedral.  We are met at the door and told that there is a concert starting and if we enter the church we have to stay for the 45 minute concert.  Sounds perfect as it is raining and cool outside!
We spend the next 45 minutes listening to an amazing organ concert to commemorate the new cathedral organ.  The musician, Alexander Grün, is only 25 years old and has three Masters Degrees!  He plays some traditional organ music and then music that is innovative. The 45 minutes absolutely flew by.  I sketched for a bit while listening to the music.  Loved it. I wish I had recorded more of the music, especially the finale of the concert…it gave me goosebumps!      https://youtube.com/shorts/HykSsp-S-9E

There are fall foods displayed on the steps to the altar to remind people to give thanks for the harvest, and to share with those in need.  

The Cathedral cloister has a beautifully tended garden,

Bob liked this statue statue of a man holding his head. This is probably Saint Denis, who was beheaded but picked up his head and walked some distance, preaching the Gospel.

The buildings surrounding the market square are tall, narrow and decoratively painted.
Next on Bob’s agenda is a visit to a small museum underneath a shopping mall. We see Roman ruins from before the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century. These ruins were discovered when excavations began for the shopping mall. The area was thoroughly excavated and recorded, but ultimately the mall was built and most of the ruins were destroyed.

This little museum has the reconstructed ruins of a temple, under a ceiling of constellations. Some of the items found when the ruins were excavated.  Well endowed males were well represented.

Our final stop in Mainz is to visit the Gutenburg Museum, which is connected to a small Natural History Museum. This display in the entrance is quite striking.

We start with the Gutenburg Museum which shows the impact of Johahannes Gutenburg’s invention of a moveable type printing press in 1440.  This press allowed for the printing of 3600 pages a day, compared to 40 by hand printing and only a few by hand copying. There were  several beautiful ancient books on display. This Atlas of the World was printed in 1482.

The World Chronicle is from 1493.

An ornate Columbia Printing Press from 1824.  

We are given a blank card that has a chip installed inside the paper when we entered the museum.  We place this card into a machine that takes a selfie of us. Then we take the still blank card to a modern printer and this is what we received.

Entering a small room with dim lighting we see the Gutenburg Bibles. Only 49 of the approximately 180 printed Gutenberg Bibles have survived and the Gutenberg Museum owns two. The complete two-volume Bible shown in the bottom of this photo was added to the collection in 1978. The second Bible is incomplete, with only the second volume surviving. The book in the top right is a calligraphed manuscript.

The Bibles were only printed in black ink – two or more colors would have been too time-consuming and expensive. Spaces for colored ornamentation were left empty and the books were handed over to an illumination workshop. As a result, all surviving editions have different ornamentation.

The Missale Moguntinum, was hand written on parchment between 1453 – 1459.

I love that the guide lines are still visible. Imagine writing this huge book. Gutenburg’s press changed how books were produced and made them available to so many more people. Seeing these bibles in person is special but I am still in awe of beautiful hand written and illustrated books.  

In the mid-15th century before printed books were readily available, the demand for books could not be met. One solution was to produce books faster. This was why copies of the “Speculum Humanae Salvationis” or “Mirror of Human Salvation,” were created in cursive and quick pen-and-ink drawings. The volumes are dated around 1450, making them approximately the same age as the printed Gutenberg bibles.

We wander through the Natural History Museum. I wonder how archaeologists are able to reconstruct skulls and bones from a pile of fragments.  It must be a very difficult puzzle.

The Wooly Rhino had a huge head compared to the rest of its body.  There are samples of real wooly rhino hair on view that were found preserved in permafrost.

I thought these fossils were really beautiful.  The plants, insects and other animals are preserved in the finest detail. They are incredible.

We forgot to check what this prehistoric creature was.  

There are a few more displays of stuffed animals.  I thought this one of different types of rabbits was interesting. It is a small museum so it doesn’t take too long to see everything.

I know this is a strange photo, but this is the handicapped washroom at the museum.  I’ve never seen a public washroom like this.

We walk along cobbled sidewalks with reminders that summer is over on our way to see the next sight on the agenda in Manz.

This huge fountain is the Fastnachtsbrunnen, or Carnival Fountain. It is almost nine meters high and has over 200 bronze figures from the Mainz Carnival Mythology. Every year on November 11, at 11:11 pm, people celebrating Carnival in Mainz gather here. When the clock strikes 11:11 pm the carnival officially begins.  

Our last stop before heading home is St. Stephen Church. This is the only German church for which the Jewish artist Marc Chagall created windows.

In 1978, the first window by the 91-year-old Chagall was installed. Chagall completed the final church window shortly before his death at the age of 97! Although all the windows are beautiful, I didn’t find the blue light in the church appealing…it felt too sombre,

Time to drive home…this was a very full day!

Luxembourg City, Luxembourg

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Day 28     Saturday, September 27, 2025

We drive a half hour to a free parking lot on the outskirts of Luxembourg city, then catch a bus to the downtown area. We should have realized something was wrong when we passed this interesting looking tower…we saw it when we drove to the parking lot. So…we caught the bus going the wrong way and ended up at different  parking lot on the outskirts of the city! The bus driver told us where to get the tram we now need to use to get into the city.  Luckily all the public transportation in Luxembourg is free!

We pass this renovation site on the way to downtown. I am impressed that buildings are almost always repaired, not demolished.

Walking downtown we pass a Cartier store. The necklace is ‘only’ 191,000€, the two bracelets are 26,900€ and 36,200€ and the ring is 113,000€…just a wee bit out of my price range!

We find a Post Office to buy stamps. While we are writing on the postcards, my purse falls down between the counter and the wall…a narrow space less than a foot wide!  I have to ask the security guard to come help. Even though his arms are much longer than mine  he is just barely able to reach my purse.  My phone fell out when he pulled my purse up but luckily it is on a cord attached to my purse so it didn’t fall to the bottom of the space behind the counter!

There is a big park downtown, at the base of high cliffs.

Yes, another church! The cathedral “Notre-Dame” of Luxembourg was built between 1613 and 1621 by the Jesuits. The stained glass windows make a stunning backdrop for the altar.

There are many paintings and tapestries in this cathedral, and the stone pillars are decorated with intricate carving.

I look up and there are paintings on the ceiling high above the nave.

We pass the National Monument in Memory of the Victims of the Shoah in Luxembourg (1940-1945). The monument was inaugurated on 17 June 2018. It is named after the Kaddish, one of the most famous Jewish prayers recited as part of mourning rituals in Judaism.

Luxembourg City has an upper plateau, which contains the historic Old Town, and a lower valley known as Grund. This area is home to some of the oldest and most picturesque buildings in the city, dating back to the 14th century. Take notice of the suspended platform on the right of this photo.

People are dining in the sky! I am not sure why anyone would want to do this. It does not appeal to me in the least, but for 325€ per person you can have lunch prepared by Michelin chefs 50 meters high above the ground!

We were in Luxembourg 46 years ago, but all I can remember is looking down from high walls onto the city, like we are doing here.

We take an elevator down to the lower part of town and cross a bridge on our way to the Natural History Museum.

I would not want to be a bus driver here, the streets are very narrow.  

We see our first halloween decorations.

The current St. John the Baptist church dates back to the 17″ century. Its rich Baroque furnishings are not its original ones, they were taken from other churches during the period after the French Revolution!

In the valley looking up at the upper city.

As we enter the Natural History Museum I am startled by the man sitting on the red couch.  From a distance I thought he was a real person.

It isn’t a big museum and after a quick look around I find a spot with a chair to sit and draw while Bob explores the rest of the museum.

This room is a hodge lodge of stuffed animals…some look old and a bit worse for wear.

Bob discovered an interesting fact about hedge hogs. “The European hedgehog is a nocturnal animal that is easy to recognize by its many spines. When faced with danger, it can curl up and form a “prickly ball”. Its luxembourgish name”Keisécker” (“cow sucker”) originates from a legend that hedgehogs sucked milk during the night from cow udders. Obviously this is not true as hedgehogs suffer from a lactose intolerance.” On our walk to the bus we stop for another look down into one of the garden areas below the walls.

We caught the right bus back to our car but getting out of the parking lot was another thing!  Thank heavens for Google maps!  We might still be driving in circles trying to get back onto the highway!

We see four nuclear power plants on the way home. They always give me an eerie feeling. I wouldn’t want to be living anywhere near one of these.

It is getting dark on the drive home but we are treated to a lovely sunset.

Metz, France

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Day 27     Friday, September 26, 2025

I had most of this post written and somehow lost it! So I had to start all over again. Lesson learned, remember to save a draft often!!

Today we drove a half hour to Metz.  First stop is the Centre Pompidou-Metz, a branch of the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris, that displays contemporary art and hosts temporary exhibitions, events, films and presentations.  The dark lattice work supporting the roof is made of huge wooden beams.

I didn’t get the artists name but can you see the two figures sleeping on one of the couches?

Maurizio Cattelan is a self-taught artist from Italy known for creating sculptures, and installations that are humorous, satirical and unconventional. Wanting to explore the power of images, Cattelan frequently appropriates uncomfortable imagery in his art.

This domestic cat skeleton seems frozen with fear and its gigantic scale reminds us of the dinosaur skeletons we have seen in Natural History Museums.  Be warned, some of the images of Cattelan’s work are disturbing.  I did not include some of the works because they were so upsetting to view.

I walk around the corner, saw this and gasped. Kaput is a display of five stuffed horses with their heads in the wall to reveal the absurdity of hunting trophies.  The traditional head trophy is reversed with the entire body suspended and powerless. I do not have the words to describe how I felt when I saw this installation.

Cattelan often uses figures in his works. This person startled me, at first I thought it was a real person sleeping. ‘Father’ These bare feet stand for the whole body, a reminder of the human body and its finiteness..they become a symbol of vulnerability. This tiny elevator makes a sound, and opens and closes its doors, just as in real life. It is perfectly functional and totally unusable. One can imagine a tiny world coming to life somewhere behind these walls.

More stuffed animals, these two labradors and the tiny chick represent a reflection on power dynamics and the fragility of life.

Artist Cyprien Gaillard’s five bags contain the tons of locks removed from the Pont des Arts where tourists once declared their undying love by attaching a lock to the bridge and throwing the key in to the Seine River. He displays them in construction bags, like unearthed artifacts, the rusty ruins of a bygone ritual.

In a long white building called The Paper Tube studio there is a Marina Abramović installation called “Counting The Rice. We are invited to patiently sort grains of rice and lentils – a simple meditative gesture that calls for attention and self-awareness.  Through this repetitive task everyone can experience art as a tool for concentration, introspection and transformation.”

We begin counting the rice.

As I am counting the grains of rice and placing them in piles of 25 I have a strange experience.  I start to think of all the soldiers who died in the First World War and each grain of rice began to represent the dead body of a soldier. When I found some grains of rice that were broken I thought of the soldiers who were “blown to bits” by the intense mortar shelling during the battles. There bodies were often never found. I felt the need to identify each pile of ‘bodies’ and place a lentil at the top of each pile as a marker or headstone of sorts. I fought back tears, as my tally marks of ‘bodies’ turned into crosses.

Bob did not have the same experience as I did.  He is soon reading a book on his phone.

These two large textile pieces were quite interesting.  The artist, Sidival Fila, cut, overlayed and recomposed the original tapestry.  

A close up of the piece on the left.The next exhibition is Copyists.  One hundred artist were invited to choose their favourite piece of art in the Louvre and use it as inspiration for their version of the work. Humberto Campana used charcoal to make this black charred version of the Victoire de Samothrace. This is a cry of alarm in the face of ecological and political crisis. Miquel Barcelo’s copy of Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa.

Dhewadi Hadjab’s copy of the Death of Marat becomes the death of a transgendered friend of the artist.

More of Maurizio Cattelan’s work. ‘Comedian’ is a fresh banana duct taped to a wall exactly 1.6 metres above the floor. The work includes a certificate of authenticity, along with detailed instructions for its proper display, for its owner to use when displaying the work. The banana and the duct tape can be replaced as needed. The Comedian sold for 6.2 million dollars!  The purchaser later ate the banana on stage!

Cattelan’s ‘Shadow’ is a work representing Cattelan’s mother who died when the artist was young.  

‘Sunday” invites the viewer to reflect on the economic inequality and the link between power and access to weapons.  Cattelan riddled 24 carat gold plated stainless steel panels with hundreds of bullet holes.

The photographer at Studio Shehrazade in Lebanon wrote…”These negatives were scratched because of a jealous husband from the Baqari family, who never let his wife go out by herself. He was upset to leam that she had come to be photographed in my studio without telling him. He came asking for the negatives. I refused to give them to him, because they were on a 35 mm roll. In the end we agreed that I would scratch the negatives of his wife with a pin, and I did so in front of him. Years later, after she had set herself on fire to escape her misery, he came back, asking for enlargements of those photographs, or other photographs she might have taken without his knowledge.”

Chen Zhen invites viewers to sit at this table with 29 chairs gathered from five continents and different social classes, however they are embedded in the table and suspended from the floor…inaccessible.

Bob like this chess “Good versus Evil” One side includes Martin Luther King Jr, the Virgin Mary and Snow White.  The other side is Adolf Hitler, Cruella de Vil and Rasputin!

After leaving the Art Gallery we walk under these bright blue street decorations on our way to the Metz’s Notre Dame Cathedral.

I wonder who would be interested in renting this storefront building?

These cakes look delicious, but they are quite expensive. €37 is $60.50 Canadian!

Metz’s Notre Dame Cathedral was begun in the early 14th century. This Cathedral has the third highest nave in France (41.41 meters or 135.9 ft), after the cathedrals of Amiens and Beauvais, both of which we visited earlier this month!        

A few photos of the impressive interior. We have seen so many cathedrals but somehow we keep being drawn into seeing more. They are so different from one another and we never know what we will be seeing when we walk through the cathedral doors.

These stained glass windows were designed by Marc Chagall.

The cathedral’s Rose Window is very impressive.

More modern stained glass windows by Jacques Villon completed in 1957.

Next stop is the Musée de La Cour d’Or.  It is a maze of rooms that covers 6,000 m² of exhibition space and 2,000 years of history in the city of Metz. This incredible onyx vase is a cremation urn from the 1st century B.C.

There is so much to see….

including this glass vase with a human face…

ancient locks,..

human skeletons…

and a couple taking wedding photos!

Both Bob and I took a photo of this Madonna and Child.  Something about it spoke to both of us.

These painted ceiling panels were discovered when a house was being renovated. They are from trees that were chopped down in 1218-1219.  This was determined by the thickness of the tree rings. They are the oldest preserved painted ceilings in Metz.

The rooms on the museum follow the chronological history of the city of Metz. It was interesting, but a lot to take in.  Finally we are in the last room.

The entrance to the museum is located in what used to be a library. This is a photo of the room when it was a library, and…

this is how it looks today.

Bruges, Belgium

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Day 21     Saturday, September 20, 2025

We drive an hour and a half to visit Bruges.  First stop is the market which was supposed to be open for another hour but most vendors are packing up because of the cold and rain.

We see this huge contraption which I am sure is a spider, but it is not moving. I just looked up Bruges Giant spider and found this little video on Instagram…I was right, it is a spider! https://www.instagram.com/reel/DO3Y573jK1r/ 

It is miserable out, lots of umbrellas, lots of rain and it is cold.

We take refuge in this cathedral along with a lot of other people.  It isn’t very warm but it is at least dry. I sit and write in my journal and Bob checks out the cathedral.  I am content to just sit and rest for a bit.

There are large beautiful tapestries on both sides of the altar.

There is an announcement in several languages that the church is closing and will reopen in a couple hours after lunch.  So we walk to the huge central square, lined with beautiful old buildings.  It had stopped raining. The entire old city of Bruges is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  The city was not damaged in either of the two World Wars so much of its Medieval heritage remained intact.

The streets are packed with tourists and it starts to rain again so we find a MacDonalds and hide out there for an hour and have our lunch.  It is dry and warm and no one cares how long we sit here.

The rain stops and we decide to get tickets for a canal boat ride.  There is a line but it moves fairly quickly and we watch the boats coming and going while we wait in line.

While we are waiting  I notice that there is a tight rope walker high in the sky!  If you look carefully at the previous photo you can see her in the top right corner just above the rooftops.  Yes, it is a woman, when she hangs upside down we see a ponytail. A rope almost 400m long was stretched at a height of 70m between the Belfry and the Church of Our Lady.

Soon we are travelling on the canals which give us a great view of many of the buildings in Bruges.

You can see the high wire attached to the cathedral tower.

We pass under many bridges, some of them so low we need to duck our heads.

The geese on the canals are owned by the city of Bruges and the penalty for killing one is five years in jail!

The city of Bruges is famous for its well-preserved medieval architecture, including many buildings featuring stepped gables.  Houses with lots of steps on the gables showed that the owner was rich.         
I wonder if the houses on the canal are damp, with the water lapping at their foundations.

This is the oldest bridge in Bruges and our driver/guide tells us that if you kiss under this bridge you will have everlasting love.  We kiss.

There are a variety of interesting buildings along the canals…

..and some great views.

There are also signs that Autumn is here.

This medieval building was built using wood, which was a fire hazard.  Most buildings in Bruges were built in a style known as Brick Gothic. 

After our boat ride we wander the streets and see this.  Lots of people are entering the building so Bob says we should follow them.  

It is an open house for the  new Brusk Art Gallery which will open in 2026.  We enter a room with shipping plastic wrap.  We aren’t sure what it is supposed to be…

…until we enter the next room and there is a  large tape art installation in the form of a web structure, and there are people climbing inside of them!  All of a sudden the giant spider we saw earlier makes sense.

I want to climb inside…my turn next!

It was interesting trying to walk around, but not really all that difficult.

This was so much fun!  Here I am inside this giant web-like structure.

There is the hole I climbed through to get inside.All too soon it is time to climb down. This was such fun.

There were several of these ‘webs’ in this huge room. What a clever idea.

Belgium is famous for its chocolate, which comes in all shapes and sizes!

There is a Carillon performance at 4:00.  We find a spot to sit just as it starts and listen to a variety of music for the next hour. The carillon is a piano like instrument that plays 47 bells.

One of the musicians was very young.

I do a bit of pen sketching while I listened to the music.  The last song played was Beethoven’s Ode To Joy and most of the audience stood up. The lady beside me told me that it is the anthem for the European Union, which has its headquarters in Brussels.  

This is an interesting building, skinny at the front and then widening out as along the streets on either side. 

We wanted to visit the Church of Our Lady which houses The Madonna and Child by Michelangelo. This world-famous white marble statue is the only work by Michelangelo that left Italy during his lifetime. But the church closed at 5:00 so we are out of luck.

We have to settle for viewing this poster.

We order a waffle with dark chocolate to share before the long drive back to our bnb. It  had a bit too much chocolate for us, but was still delicious.

Ypres, Flanders Fields Museum, Belgium

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Day 20     Friday, September 19, 2025

Today we visit the In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres, Belgium.

This museum uses a variety of displays to tell the story of the invasion of Belgium in World War I. There are holographs which use actors to tell the stories of actual people.

The total number of military and civilian casualties in World War I was about 40 million: estimates range from around 15 to 22 million deaths and about 23 million wounded military personnel, ranking it among the deadliest conflicts in human history. But it wasn’t just people that suffered during this war. More than 8 million horses, donkeys and mules died in WWI as well.  Such a horrendous loss of life!

These early gas masks provided some protection against chlorine gas, which was used for the first time during WWI,  but were only effective for about five minutes with concentrated doses of the gas. 

We take a break and climb 231 steps to reach the top of the bell tower. half way the steps change from a concrete spiral staircase to these metal steps, which are a bit scarier to climb.

We are always amazed at the size of the bells in these bell towers.

Soon we are outside taking in the views of the town and countryside.

We can see for miles.

I am very happy that the 231 steps down from the tower are cement.  I really didn’t like those metals ones.

After the clim to the top of the tower we have lunch and chatted with this Belgium couple who like to travel on their colourful bike.  We were surprised as they were both quite elderly.

Back in the museum.  There were lots of photos and film clips from the war.  They bring the horror of the war to life.

The bottom photo shows the damage done to the building that now houses this museum.  It was rebuilt after the war.

Men sleeping in closely packed conditions underground.  

There were displays of the full kit worn by soldiers from the countries that fought in the war. The first display with the kilt is from the Canadian Black Watch Royal Highland Regiment.These banners are for John McCrae’s poem “In Flanders Fields”.

A closer look reveals that there are photos of soldiers hidden in the poppies.

Taps is played at 8:00 every night at the Ypres Menin Gate memorial.

This memorial is engraved with the names of more than 54,000 officers and men whose graves are not known. I feel emotional when viewing these lists of those who died but were never found and buried.

Walking back to the car we pass a gallery with these amazing porcelain sculptures by Bénedicte Vallet.

Next stop is the Essex Farm Cemetery where the Canadian doctor, Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae wrote his now famous poem “in Flanders Fields” after seeing poppies growing in battle-scarred fields. The poem was written in memory a friend who died at Ypres,  We pass some windmills on the way to the last cemetery we will visit on this trip.

Tyne Cot cemetery, located near Ypres, is the largest Commonwealth cemetery in the world and a memorial to the missing soldiers of World War I.  It contains the graves of 11,956 Commonwealth soldiers, primarily from the Battle of Passchendaele.

So many graves and 8,367of them are unidentified British or Commonwealth servicemen.

The wall in the background of this photo is engraved with the names of the 35,000 soldiers whose remains were never found or identified. One last stop at the Canadian Memorial which commemorates the actions and sacrifices of the Canadian Corps during the First World War’s Battle of Passchendaele. 

“The Canada Gate is the second of two linked ‘Portals of Remembrance’. The first is The Last Steps Memorial Arch, marking the spot in Halifax Nova Scotia where 350,000 Canadian soldiers took their last steps in Canada before embarking on ships for service overseas in Belgium and France during the First World War. For thousands, their last steps in life were taken here at Passchendaele. For those who survived, their lives were forever changed.”~ veterans.gc.ca

Another heavy duty day.

Waterloo, Belgium and the Defeat of Napoleon

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Day 19     Thursday, September 18, 2025

We are on the road by 10:00, heading to Waterloo which is the site of the famous Battle that ended Napoleon’s French Empire. The roads can be challenging to drive. Many are fairly narrow and today we share the road with trolley cars, automobiles, trucks, motorcyclists and bicyclists! There is a lot to pay attention to and Bob its doing an amazing job driving.  I am usually a good navigator but I didn’t have the best night and today we get to Waterloo in spite of my navigating!! The Wellington Museum was easy to find and there was free parking nearby.  The museum is located in the building that the British Duke of Wellington used as his headquarters when he defeated Napoleon at Waterloo in1815.  The soldiers uniforms displayed are, from left to right, the French Carabiniers, the British Light Dragoons and the British 8th Hussars.

The museum has a room with weapons used during the Battle of Waterloo.

A lot of artwork, paintings and information about the battle and even the death mask of Napoleon which I find rather unsettling.

The French troops had to forage to survive, and many soldiers died of disease, malnutrition and exhaustion brought on by the extremely difficult conditions they endured.  Meanwhile the French generals travelled with dining sets that included items like crystal containers and silver and gold plated egg cups and spoons!

Soldiers were treated by amputating injured limbs to prevent gangrene. This is a typical surgeons kit for amputations which were performed quickly without anaesthetic and in five minutes. The saws and other medical equipment were not cleaned between patients so the post operative mortality rate was very high.

If you survived the amputation and had enough money your prosthetic leg could look like this.  I imagine most common soldiers made do with some sort of simple wooden peg leg.

We cross a patio to enter another part of the museum and are surprised to find a huge Playmobile exhibition titled ‘A History of Empires’.  There are 16 display cases, each depicting a different time in history.

The war between Julius Caesar and the Gauls in 54 B.C. Rome’s first race course built in 599 B.C.

A naval Battle but I don’t remember which one.

The Roman Coliseum. We really enjoyed this unusual exhibit and marvelled at the thousands and thousands of Playmobile figures and accessories that were used to create these dioramas. This very old St. Joseph Church from 1690 is right across the street so we had a look.

The area under the dome is huge and the church itself has large columns on either side of the nave. We have visited many churches and Cathedrals on our travels, but they are all so different from one another.  

The road in front of the Church is cobble-stoned and we can see the depressions in the road made over the years by cart wheels.

I adore these white and pink small daisy-like flowers.  No idea what they are called but wish we could grow them back home.

Next we drive to ‘The Lion’s Mound’ which is located at the site of the Waterloo Battle. This earthen cone is 169 m in diameter and 41 m high. An enormous lion, 4.50 m long, 4.45 m high and weighing 28 tons is located on the top of the mound.

It symbolizes the victory of the monarchies; its open mouth is turned towards France, defeated; its paw resting on the terrestrial globe represents the peace that Europe has won. Bob went for a walk all the way around the  mound but I was tired and it was cold and windy so I stayed in the car. We hit rush hour on the way home. I am so glad I am not driving!

Brussels, Belgium

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Day 17     Tuesday, September 16, 2025.

Our Airbnb is in the basement of a huge old house on the outskirts of Brussels.  You can see the widows to our suite which is actually quite bright.

The suite has a lot of character. We got settled last night and just before bed plugged in all our electronics…and we blew the breaker! All the lights in our suite went out. We messaged our host, who came down in her jammies to fix everything. We were lucky she heard the message beep on her phone as she was already asleep. It was quite the day yesterday!

I really needed a quiet day, so I stayed home and got all caught up on the blog. That feels really good. It is hard when I get behind. It takes quite a while to get each day’s post done but I really love having this souvenir of our trip. I joke that when we aren’t able to travel anymore we can revisit trips on the blog and say “remember when..”

Bob gets restless on these stay at home days so he goes to visit a car museum in Brussels. He writes the rest of this post.

Autoworld is located in a plaza near the Art & History Museum, Royal Museum of Military History and a Napoleon Museum. It is the building to the left of the arches.A 1896 Bollee Voiturette called a Mother-in-Law Murderer, because the passenger sat up front.  It could go 30 kph.

A 1913 Peugeot. The spare tire is bolted onto the front tire, rather than being mounted on the fender.

A classic 1937 Cord with front-wheel drive and retractable headlights.

A 1936 Citroen fitted with a gas generator (behind the front fender) used during the Second World War. As gasoline was in short supply, the car used the captured gas (from burning wood or coal) to fuel the vehicle.  

I thought the first vehicle ever built was the 1770 steam powered Cugnot.  But 100 years earlier in 1672 a Belgian priest in the Imperial Court of Peking designed this steam powered vehicle called an Eolipyle.  It was 2 feet long and built as a toy for the Emperor.  High-pressure steam comes out the front and forces the cups on the shaft to rotate, similar to how a waterwheel works.  Instead of water turning the wheel, the high-pressure steam turns the wheel.

A Fabrique Nationale 1930 car built for a Shah but never paid for or delivered.

A one-of-a-kind 1991 Lotec TT1000 based on a Ferrari Testarossa, with twin turbos and 1000 HP. It was fast, 370 kph and cost $3.6 million.  

And for something more budget-minded, a 1959 Heinkel Kabine. This model came standard with hydraulic brakes and a reverse gear. The original cost was around 300 euros. 

A 1991 Audi Quatro prototype made out of wood.

A 1939 Horch Cabrio.  August Horch started his car factory in 1900 but left in 1908 after a dispute and started a new company Audi (based on the Latin translation of his name).  In 1932 both companies merged with 2 others to form the new Audi, hence the four rings in the logo.