We Kowtow in Lantau (Days 10 and 11)

On Tuesday, July 8, fully intending to get caught up on our hotel-sink laundry effort, I signed the kids up for a two-hour Chinese Art class in the Kids At Art studio in our hotel. (That effort would be thwarted as I spent most of that time trying to contact Wells Fargo in an effort to allow us withdraw even more funds even more frequently.) However, with a promise to return with full payment, I left the kids to enjoy the full focus of the attentive staff. 

I asked the teachers to use Mandarin as much as possible as they guided Xander, Vaughn and Quinn through new techniques with ink and paint. The kids created several paintings each with the intent of presenting their favorites to Betsy for her upcoming birthday.

That afternoon I continued to shirk my laundry duties, opting instead to sit and write by the pool as the kids frolicked in the cool water. When Betsy joined us after work, I commented on how very friendly the pool service staff was as they brought us our sandwiches, lemonade and beer. When we got the bill for HK$1,457 (US$188), we realized why. Holy hot pot, there went our dinner plans!

Pictured: $57 worth of beverages

Still the pool was the most beautiful one we’ve seen so far; overlooking the harbor and with a waterfall at one end. Plus we were treated like kings so we decided it was worth it and retired to the hotel room for the evening and curled up with some ramen and Chinese television.

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July 9 was busy and memorable Wednesday as we left the hotel early for a day-long tour of Lantau Island before departing for Shanghai that night.

Lantau Island is twice the size of Hong Kong Island and the largest among the approximately 256 outlying islands within the territory. The tour began with a 40-minute ferry ride from Hong Kong to Lantau through the busy harbor filled with cargo ships heading off to or returning from long voyages. Luckily for us on a day where temperatures climbed over 100 degrees, we hopped from the air-conditioned boat to an air-conditioned bus that offered salvation after each broiling tour stop on the island. A sign posted at the front of the bus offered this sobering advice:

I've always been suspicious of my right thumb and now I'm on high alert.

Many of the 120,000 inhabitants of Lantau have jobs in Hong Kong (2 million total) and must make the daily ferry trip to work. They ride their bicycles from home and leave them parked together on the dock. 

But not a bike lock in sight.

Our guide says there is very little crime on Lantau because most people can trace their family lineage back for centuries and very few people migrate to the island so basically no one can get away with anything. There are, however, several prisons (apparently for criminals from elsewhere) including a juvenile detention center that offered a nice incentive for good behavior for the day.

The first stop on the tour was a refreshing visit to the pristine Cheung Sha beach. We were pleased to see a barrier ringing the shore after hearing about the six fatal shark attacks around the island over the last 15 years and happily waded into to the warm surf.

The bus then took us to the unique Tai O fishing village, a former haven for smugglers and pirates that is now a popular tourist destination. We enjoyed a short boat ride that gave us a close-up look at some the remarkable, yet dilapidated, pang uks; fisherman's homes that are built on stilts to better endure flooding. 

Fishing long provided the primary means of income in the village but overfishing has forced the inhabitants to rely on tourist spending. We passed stall after stall of very ripe, sun-dried, salted  examples of meager fish, shrimp and mollusks that neither we nor anyone else on our tour dared to bring back on the bus.

There's something fishy going on around here.

We visited a temple where we had our first experience burning incense as a symbolic offering. In Chinese Taoist and Buddhist temples, worshippers light and burn incense which they wave our raise above the head as they bow to the statues or plaques of a deity or ancestor. One makes says a prayer of hope or thanks and then places the stick or sticks in a receptacle in front of the idol.

Next, our bus climbed the winding road up the mountain to the Ngong Ping plateau for a visit to the majestic Tain Tian Buddha Statue and the nearby Po Lin Monastery, where we were served a delicious vegetarian meal.

The monastery was built in 1907 and plans for the Big Buddha were made over sixty years ago with the project finally coming to fruition in 1990. The 202 separate pieces of bronze were gradually shipped to the island and then trucked up the hill before they were assembled in 1993 to form the 112-foot, 250-ton statue. The serene and dignified Buddha rests on a bed of lotus flowers with his left hand in his lap, signifying the giving of the moral treasures known as dhana, and his right hand is raised, representing the removal of affliction.

The structure beneath houses three separate exhibition halls of worship and six smaller bronze statues surround the Buddha praising and making the various symbolic offerings required to enter into nirvana. 

Our tour of Lantau ended with a ride aboard the Ngong Ping Skyrail, a 25-minute cable car that offered stunning views as we descended from Hgong Ping plateau to Tung Chung New Town near the airport, from which we would depart a few hours later. 

We shared our ride with a South African/Australian expat and her daughters, aged 10 and 8, who gained our admiration as they described their earlier four-hour ascent by foot to the Big Buddha in the day's intense heat and humidity.

Our flight that evening from Hong Kong to Shanghai took just over two hours, transporting five sleepy travelers to the third stop on our journey for new round of adventures, cuisine, friends and hilarious mis-translations.

DE HAAN, AMSTERDAM, HOME (DAYS 40-44)

The scent of manure from the neighboring farm fields was so thick you could taste it as we pulled in to the CenterParcs resort village in De Haan, Belgium on Friday night. Fortunately, the olfactory malefaction passed by midday Saturday and was quickly forgotten as we enjoyed five relaxing days with little planned but exploring the resort and nearby beach on the North Sea, visiting Amsterdam for a day and meeting up with friends one last time.

Our roomy, three-bedroom cabin had a kitchen, two-stories and plenty of room to spread out; a welcome layout for the last accommodations we would call home on our trip. The park had a general store (with a great beer selection) and was packed with activities including an indoor kids' play area, a swim park with a wave pool and waterslides, an indoor sport park where we played a family round of badminton, a bowling alley (didn't), mini-golf (did) and more. Needless to say, along with Disneyland (Day 38) and our afternoon at Stardust park in Brussels (Day 31), DeHaan ranked as one of the kids' favorite destinations.

The town is quiet, picturesque and very European; there are flowers in every window box on the police station and signs exclusively in Dutch in the laundromats. We were pleased to once again find ourselves at a charming refuge favored by locals, even if English is an afterthought in De Haan. The only way I found out that one business was a small grocery/convenience store was by walking up and opening the door. Because their sign wasn't a helpful indicator:

After a breakfast buffet and our first visit to the water slides on Saturday morning, our friends Frank and Carlos made the drive up from Brussels with Frank's mom to explore the area with us.

While we endured some heavy winds and really the first plan-altering precipitation of our entire trip, we still rode a tram to the center of town and the kids hit a trampoline carnival ride before the rains drove us back to the resort. Fortunately our first order of business had been a stroll to the seashore to feel the waves, collect some shells and poke a dead jellyfish with a stick.

After a quiet day around the resort on Sunday, we made our last major sightseeing trip on Monday - Betsy's birthday! - when we got up early to make the three-hour drive to Amsterdam. The Netherlands struck us as being very clean, well-organized and healthy - at least the rest stops, vehicles and roadside fields, buildings and waterways we saw. We arrived in the city shortly before lunchtime and, after hunting down a parking spot, set out on foot to wander along the canals and see what we could find.

Amsterdam, the fourth world capital of our trip, was busy and alive on the crisp, sunny day of our visit. People were milling about everywhere, causing Betsy to wonder, "Don't any of these people have jobs?!"

She left me to ponder that at one of the local coffeehouses while she and the kids took a little walk. It was some of the best coffee I've ever had (not pictured).

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The most watery city in the world gets its distinction from three main canals, dug in the 17th century, that form concentric belts through the old downtown, which boasts 1550 monumental buildings. We enjoyed weaving our way along the numerous connecting canals and seeing the houseboats and old crooked warehouses, many of them refurbished as cool living spaces.   

Since we decided to forego the art scene and save the Van Gogh and Rembrandt museums for another time, the one place we really wanted to see was the Anne Frank House. A moderate queue and a look at some information in the museum's shop gave us time for a family history lesson on Anne Frank and WWII.

We saw the warehouse for Mr. Frank's former business and where the family's hideout was built in a secret rear annex. We walked through the offices where the refugees' only support worked by day and where Anne, her sister Margot, mother Edith, father Otto and four others would occasionally sneak by night. We walked past a reconstruction of the bookcase that hid the access panel to the annex and walked up the stairs to the tiny living space shared by eight people from July 6, 1942 until August 4, 1944 when the German police stormed in after an unidentified informer exposed them. It was difficult to place one's self in their shoes; terrified to cough, sneeze, flush a toilet or crack a window shade lest they be discovered and thrown to the Nazi devils; bored, trapped, alone, cramped and fearful for day upon day. While the annex is completely unfurnished, the walls and layout have remain unchanged and walking through Anne's bedroom with the pictures she pasted up on the wall still intact, seeing the map where Otto Frank marked the advancing Allied forces and the section of wallpaper where Anne and Margot's height was marked during their stay was very moving. The original diaries, handwritten in Dutch and spanning several books were also on display.

Anne Frank was important not only because she chronicled a chapter of world history from a viewpoint that usually goes unheard but more so because of the life, love, hopes and dreams for mankind she expressed so beautifully in spite of her dire circumstances.

No photography was allowed inside but here are the kids in front of the exterior of the warehouse right after our visit.

Next we took a relaxing one-hour boat tour through the canals and enjoyed learning about the grand buildings, beguiling houseboats and intricate bridges lining the channels.

Betsy slipped on her fabulous birthday gift, the shimmering Swarovski ring purchased that day from their Amsterdam retail store.

At one point, we consulted our GPS to determine which route we should take next to explore the city and decided on a corner that we hadn't reached previously. Three blocks later, we failed to notice the crimson light bulbs above the windows but we did see the woman in the window who was, as Vaughn put it, "pretending to be a mannequin but with no shirt on." As she pulled the curtain closed with a frown, we made a u-turn and made our way back towards more familiar territory.

Following our day in Amsterdam, two lazy days back at the De Haan resort with nowhere to be and nothing to do closed out our vacation. We bought a shovel for the beach and had a blast digging in the sand and leaping in the waves.

On Wednesday evening we enjoyed a visit from our friends Max, Els and daughters Jill and Anna -Paulina. A pizza feast, lots of laughs, and hopes for many reunions in the future preceded this beautiful sunset on the beach.  

After the two-hour dinner, the kids were eager to stretch their legs as we began to stroll around De Haan. Shortly after leaving the restaurant at dusk, all three kids ran around a corner and were clotheslined by an almost-invisible cable strung up between pillars at the bike-rental store shown in the second picture of this post. Xander took the worst of it on his neck and the height of the wire was evident as Vaughn got it on the nose and Quinn on her right eyebrow. 

We went to the floral police station and made a report so I'm sure the bike store got a stern reprimand in the morning. Of course, it took an some Americans sprinting blindly around a dark corner in an unfamiliar town to point out the problem, but we did our civic duty and - finally! - a Belgian cop wrote my information down in his little book. 

Thursday morning started early as we made our way to the airport first thing in the morning. One of our strategies was to put a packed suitcase inside an otherwise empty larger suitcase to make our return trip a little easier. It was a great idea that made packing easy but cramming everything into our little Skoda Octavia a lot like playing Tetris. Here's us pulling everything out upon arrival at the Brussels airport for our flight back home. Vaughn has the print we bought during our visit to Monet's house and gardens.

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This is the last installment of the Hughes on the Loose: Europe 2012 blog after 27 posts covering 44 days. We've had over 1900 page views and we're delighted our friends and family could share the true joys of Europe right along with us:

Our trip ended with our return to the Twin Cities on August 30. We will have to find a local resource for some of the thirty new varieties of beer we've sampled during our travels (several of them way more than once). The true highlights were our stays in London (during the Olympics!) and Paris, living in Brussels, the day trips to Amsterdam, Dinant and Monschau, seeing all the castles, walls, cathedrals, palaces and boobs, just being together and the countless little joys and discoveries that happened every day. 

goodbye laundromats, 

hello dishwasher

goodbye museums, 

hello classrooms

goodbye pigeons, 

hello piano

goodbye great beer everywhere, 

hello all English all the time

goodbye Bob l'eponge,

hello NFL

goodbye subways, 

hello Hopkins

goodbye cigarette butts, 

hello water fountains and trash cans

goodbye suitcases, 

hello baseball gloves

goodbye new friends, 

hello home

 Ha ha ha ha ha! Weiner Circus!

METRO TO "BEACH," GARDENS & CATHEDRAL (DAY 16)

Today we successfully used a Metro day pass, taking three different jaunts and only hopping on one wrong train!  

Thanks to Betsy's French and some helpful passers-by, our first train took us to the far north side of the main loop where we walked one short block to the Canal of Brussels and the tenth edition of the city's temporary summer "beach." 

There were no swimming opportunities but plenty of sand and a few other kid-friendly activity areas. The best features were the international food and drink stands all the way up and down the strip. That day, however, we chose to pack our usual lunch of french bread, ham and cheese so we mostly just enjoyed the smells...except for the mojito I sipped on while the kids frolicked in the sand.

After our second foray underground, we emerged at the Botanical Gardens of Brussels. The six-hectacre gardens, originally opened in 1829 to great fanfare, includes a central domed rotunda and numerous sculptures which were added in the late 1890's. 

  

In 1938 most of the botanical resources were removed to the National Botanic Garden of Belgium on the grounds of Bouchout Castle just north of the city - a spot we hope to visit soon. The original site we saw Wednesday now stands as a cultural center while the historical statues and much of the garden is still intact.

We found the building, fountains and walkways quite run down but one did get a sense of what a gathering place the garden must have been in its heyday. The trees, hedges and flowers were mostly well maintained and there was still a cafe in the rotunda serving food and drinks (of course) as well as a museum displaying historical photographs.

We stayed aboveground to walk a few blocks south to what appeared to be a very grand cathedral on our map of Brussels and passed by a striking monument known as the Congress Column. The monument, completed in 1859, memorializes several different stages of Belgian history from the statue of King Leopold I atop the column to the tomb of the unknown soldiers of the World Wars at the base. It also commemorates the founding of Belgium in 1830 and the statues at the foot of the structure symbolize the various liberties guaranteed under the country's constitution.

We weren't disappointed as we turned the corner and first saw La Cathedrale des Saints Michel-et-Gudule. Of all of the places of worship we've visited thus far, this was the most awe-inspiring.

The stations of the cross were sculptures carved into alcoves along the outer walls, twelve of the columns lining the main aisle of the sanctuary were adorned with large statues of the apostles, the woodwork on the pulpits and confessionals were remarkably intricate and the modern pipe organ soared up to the ceiling. The cathedral in its current form was built between 1226 and 1276 and the facade was completed in the mid-fifteenth century.

The site is even older, however, as a chapel dedicated to St. Michael was built here as early as the 9th century. Visitors can walk underneath the main floor to see the foundations of the church built around 1047 that replaced the first one. You can touch the actual walls at ground-level from Romanesque times and see graffiti that was scratched into the stone hundreds of years ago. The picture below was on a display underground and shows how they excavated the original site. The two squares at lower left were crypts that are still open for viewing and bones were visible inside them.

We made it home despite getting on the wrong subway line for our last leg of the journey. I realized it quickly so we switched trains and got to the flat in time for the evening Olympic coverage. Betsy enjoyed a special night out when she and her good friend from work, Els Dedobeleer, shared a wonderful meal at Cook and Book. Their evening concluded with an elegant tea serving and a photo-bomber.

We brought along plenty of art supplies and the kids have enjoyed expressing their excitement about their adventures on paper. Below are Quinn's rendition of the gargantuan Palace of Justice and Vaughn's map of one our most frequently-travelled routes through the city.  

A few new thoughts and observations about living here...

Some Europeans, upon visiting the U.S., comment that Americans are so friendly. Well it's not that we're necessarily friendlier, it's just that we acknowledge one another in public. I'm used to passing by someone or sharing an elevator and exchanging a smile or a nod of the head. Here, I notice that if I do happen to make eye contact with someone, their countenance typically doesn't change from a distracted frown. It's not a big deal, but perhaps as a parent who's usually accompanied by three energetic youngsters I suppose I've become accustomed to a little more geniality. I'll just keep smiling and saying hello to people and maybe it'll rub off.

I've been struggling to decipher the worn-out pictograms on our combination oven/microwave appliance in our flat. I was unable to find any use guides online so I sought the help of our landlord. A day later, he was kind enough to send over a manual...in Dutch. Unfortunately, I'm still not entirely certain how to properly use the bedeiningspaneel for regelmatig schoonmaken but at least I can make things hot.

We've learned that every time we leave the flat, we'd each better have two things; a full bottle of water and an empty bladder. Water fountains are almost nowhere to be seen and you have to pay to use the toilet just about anywhere you go. Unless, of course, you're male and able to let go in public at one of the open urinal stands we've come across from time to time.

Finally, it had been way too long since we came across some statuesque mammaries so we were delighted to find this young colossal couple in a nude embrace outside a financial building near the Botanical Gardens.