Travel Plans, Summer Weather, Marionettes

May 24, 2010, 6:04 pm
Filed under: Ghent, London, Paris, Travel

After a lot of discussion and some back-and-forth, the date for our return to Minnesota is set for Friday morning, June 11th, 2010. We fly British Airways (Brussels – London – Chicago – Minneapolis), arriving at MSP Friday night at 9:25 p.m. We had planned on coming home the first week of July, but there is an audition I want to take in Oklahoma City June 16th. Since our house won’t be ready until July 1st, we will stay for a few weeks with our parents.

Now that we are sure of our departure date, we have begun preparing for the move: returning borrowed items, giving away things we don’t plan to bring home (almost everything), strategizing about packing, etc. We have also booked two final sightseeing trips, one to London (May 27-31) and one to Paris (June 8-9). If you think it sounds a little crazy to be in Paris two days before we leave for Minneapolis, I’m inclined to agree with you, but Katie is adamant about saying “good-bye” to Paris, so we will go. London has been on our list of must-see cities since the very beginning. Everyone gushes about it and neither of us has ever been there, so we’re excited. These last three weeks will doubtless be busy and full of mixed emotions for us.

The weather in Ghent has been unbelievably nice for almost a week straight. Clear blue skies, temperatures around 80, and holiday crowds (Pentecost) have drawn us outside to enjoy some of the things near our apartment that we tend to take for granted. Twice over the weekend we heard live music coming from Vrijdagmarkt: first a small town band, then a fife and drum corp. These were wind bands sounding their best in their native environment!

Watching the band in Vrijdagmarkt

Is that a C clarinet?

Fife and drum corp

Saturday we took in the marionette show at the Huis van Alijn, a great museum of Flemish ”everyday life.” Despite being entirely in Dutch, the show held Wes’s attention for the full hour-and-a-half. The plot was peculiarly Belgian:

A statue of the town’s first mayor has stood in the same spot, in the same square, for 100 years. The current mayor proposes to replace it with a statue of himself, resulting in protests from the town’s people. A group of thieves make off with the statue and a bag of municipal funds, but the town clown saves the day, recovering both the statue and the money. The statue is returned to its rightful place, and everyone is happy.

Upstairs to the marionette theater

Marionette show with (left to right) the statue, the town clown, and a police man.

Sunday we had lunch at Eden Restaurant, a place we pass everyday at the corner where Baudelostraat meets Vrijdagmarkt, but where we had never eaten. We ordered pasta (we continually see people eating pasta there) and listened to the fife and drum corps through the open windows. We felt like real Gentenaars!