So Tuesday I went and presented and chatted at the MRC IHR - it went great! The rest of Nottingham got a  bit sillier...

We went to Lincoln and met Jeanne! We climbed some ridiculously steep hills to get there. 

Dave (plus his ridiculous hair) joined us from London as well.

This is from the inside of the cathedral there. The place was packed because of graduation ceremonies - lame! This cathedral is in incredibly good condition, takes more than 1m pounds per year to keep it in that shape. 

Ick, look at all these graduates! We missed out on a roof-top tour because of them... 

The weather in England was terrible. This went from blue skies to an actual river forming in the street in 5 minutes flat.

This is the chapel from an old women's prison - they practiced segregation here, each prisoner was kept in solitary confinement pretty much constantly. At the chapel, they could only see the guy giving the sermon - and had to wear those leather masks you see in the back to and from, so no one could recognise another. This was a pretty heavy place.

The same cathedral from afar! Check out that weather...

Here we said goodbye to Jeanne - thanks again for meeting up with us - we had a great time, very excited to see you again later this year.

We rented a car - it was supposed to be a VW polo, but we got a Peugot 308 diesel. Pretty nice!!

We took ourselves a little less seriously.

M O - for the Major Oak we visited below...

Here we are, the oak is crazy old, so old it needs supports???

Here, we went Segwaying around Sherwood forest. Seriously. Segwaying. Sherwood forest. See those off road tires? It was pretty serious terrain! This was way, way, way, WAY more fun than it should have been.

Dave looks like this is his morning commute...

The forest was beautiful - this is me illegally taking a photo with one hand off the segway bars - I'm slightly amazed I didn't suffer a serious injury. I did manage to break it... but it got better...

 

Back on the train! This is after our 1 (+1 hour timezone) hour flight from Nottingham to Brussels, from which we needed to take the train to Amsterdam. 

Aw yeah.

Amsterdam seems pretty snazz.

There are so many people/tourists here though.

This might not seem like much, but after 4 days of being wet in the UK, plus the rain in Brussels - blue skies!!!!!11 (Also a jet contrail) 

I thought this was a cool old building but it turned out to be a shopping mall. bummer...

So Lex and Dave arrive tomorrow, and we'll see what Amsterdam has to offer!!11

After Brugge we headed to the large city of Brussels. Here we are outside one of the main squares there. We are staying in a tiny B&B just outside the metro, tiny from the outside, but our room is about the same size as our living room + bedroom + bathroom of our flat, so really nice.

Here, Audrey spots a large duck. Showdown.

Brussels is a weird combination of old, new, weird and sensible. This is the weird bit.

Here's the old bit - an old statue of Leopold the something really important. Surrounded by ultra-mod offices and...

The really old museum corner, some of these buildings date back to the 12th century...

We went to the musical instruments museum, an amazing museum with all the old musical instruments from around the world. Here is Audrey awkwardly standing next to what is a huge instrument. The museum had the amazing idea of having recordings of the instruments in little panels next to them - that is what Audrey is plugged in to - this worked much too well, and the are all pretty much broken through over use.

We spent two days just wandering around Brussels - this is another square with no apparent purpose, opposite a derilict old cathedral - the mix between new and old and being-remodelled or being-demolished is really strange.

A tequila van - it was ~11am.

wtf.

There are some really great places in Brussels, they just seem really hard to find. This is ice cream from an astoundingly grumpy man, but it was extremely delicious. Audrey is struck by the dilemma of choice...

Brussels is also the site of the European parliament. A site of great delaying-tactics and hoo hah apparently. We walked through it accidentally, luckily it was the weekend so no one was there. As you might be able to tell, the weather was crap.

I'm not sure what this sign is telling me not to do, so I took a picture to make damn sure I violated whatever it was.

Here's the big important building itself. 

We were actually on our way to the Natural History Museum.

This is the sum total explanation of this exhibit - we found it lacking.

Here is a little bit of moon rock gifted to the people of Belgium by the Americans for their help sending their men to the moon. Really pretty rock!

This is a children's exhibit for exploring the 5 senses. It was a blast. 

I was a bit blue through out however...

This is a snake poo, the first time I've seen it. Hooray?

Archaeopteryx! A dinosaur closely related to birds, or perhaps the first bird, depending on who you talk to. (This is only a model, the real one is in Germany, it was a big find!)

The dinosaur exhibit here was great.

This is "Stan", an original T-Rex skeleton. Stan had a troubled life, including suffering gout (too much red meat!) cracked ribs and fused vertebrae (from the gout!) and a tooth hole in his head, probably from another t-rex (this was on the mend!). Kind of alarming standing next to this, they would have been HUGE! 

Our museum lunch included beer from an abbey in Belgium - on tap???

This is a really really old shopping arcade.

tin tin from the source!

Racially inappropriate tin tin!

Weather still crap, long tunnel of restaurants harassing you to eat. Tourist Trap central!

Here's a wedding at the nearby cathedral!

THIS cathedral! No pressure!!

These buildings look like they would hurt to fall on top of.

hehehehe, a butt.

There are comic strip walls scattered around the city - really cool.

MORE waffles?!!?

Yes, yes we can.

This is outside a Van Gogh something (museum?). The guy in the coat on the left is a statue of Gogh, the guy in the chair next to him is a fake, who scared the crap out of unsuspecting passers by. It was great! (Mainly because we saw him do it way before we reached him!)

Here he is, the icon of Brussels - the "manneken pis", or peeing boy. He's pretty small. It's Bastille day, so he's dressed appropriately. There is apparently a woman who works in the nearby Brussels museum who has the job of dressing him every day.

Audrey is thoroughly entertained....

This was a really popular spot.

We took a day trip to a city called "Gent", about 35 minutes away from Brussels. It's a sort of in between Brussels\Brugge, in size and feeling. It was day 2 of a 10 day long festival they have there, so packed, noisy - great!

This was a really pretty city, full of old buildings unspoilt (unlike Brussels!)

Was this any good? We considered seeing it... Probably in French\Flemish

It rained constantly.

There were huge stages set across the canals.

This is the local specialty, blackberry lollies. They were pretty great.

Gent has an old castle. Built apparently to keep control of the rich and rowdy merchants of the area, rather than any defensive measure. Great fun running around it.

This guy was there the whole day. Champion!

I am not a puppet!

Here we have the monks pleading for mercy, the tiny - tiny waisted count was not amused.

Apparently a real 2-handed sword! Unreal!

Good view from the top of the castle, perfect position to watch those merchants...

There were other solutions as well. Spot Audrey in this picture!

The count here was also famous for rounding all the rich merchants up at one point - and pretty much telling them all that they were going to be hanged for being too rich and immoral and silly. So they were stripped to there underpants and wore nooses around their necks and were paraded around a square - and then let go! The humiliation was apparently enough to keep them in check. The hangmans noose is a popular symbol in Gent to this day... For some reason??

One of the old torture chambers (pretty though)

It doesn't really come through in the picture, but it is bucketing down here. These are locally made liquers, kind of like bailey's on steroids.

Probably some puppet show or theatre? Nothing was in english - looked really cool!

That stage from before is in use! Terrible music,great stage!!

So that's the quick summary of Brussels. I'm just about to pack all this up so we are ready for our 5:30am wake up call to catch our flight to Nottingham! Hooray! I've also spent much of the last few days running through my seminar\results. Pretty excited\terrified to actually do the seminar, should be fun.