Road-trip to Rotterdam

Rotterdam, like quite a few cities, I suspect, (Hamburg, Marseilles, dear old Minneapolis) has a quite undeserved reputation for being drab and uninteresting. Just because it got bombed and is not as picturesque and charming as Amsterdam, everybody thinks of it as an old frump. (Or new, frump, as the case may be.) But I found it quite attractive. Sure there are lots of new buildings, but most of them are beautiful. And the bridges are really stunning. They have one of those new-style suspension bridges that has one pillar at one end, from which the whole thing hangs. St. Paul decided against one like that to replace the high bridge, and chose a more traditional-feeling one instead. Big mistake, I think.

Anyway, R-dam is the largest port in the world, by tonnage. (Not just in Europe - in the world.) My host had some business to attend to there, so since we had to drop off some Sufis at the airport, very early, to catch their early flight for Delhi, we continued north on the Autoroute 1 for Lille, and watched the sun rise over Flanders. Signs for Chantilly, l'Oise, and la Somme. I shuddered when we crossed the last one - site of a great battle in the war the French still call La Grande Guerre.

And so we crossed Belgium, which impressed me as a humble, dingy place. Utterly flat, and rather comfortingly run-down. Apparently the Flemish are not nearly so up-tight about things like neatness and paint-jobs as the Dutch. But they do have very beautiful old towns. We went deliberately by way of Ghent, to see The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, by Jan van Eyck (1432), an altarpiece displayed in a room in the cathedral. It was "worth the trip" as the Guide Michelin puts is. Definitely three stars. The painting is a triptych, whose central panel depicts the Lamb That Was Slain, blood streaming out of His breast into a chalice, censed by angels, and adored by four groups of saints: red-robed martyrs, blue-robed non-martyrs, prophets and others, and contemporaries. It is quite large, so the cities in the distant baackground can be minutely detailed. Around back (the two folding doors of the triptych, which are on the front when shut) is the annunciation, with a rather urgent-looking Gabriel, whose hair is touselled, as though he just got out of bed. He seems to be rushing at the Virgin,who appears somewhat startled, and not at all pleased to be interrupted in her studies. (As usual, she is reading something.)

In the Crypt there is a fine, small Passion showing Christ bearing the Cross, surrounded by numerous heads of extremely ugly, frightening people: Hieronymus Bosch.

We crossed the parvis to have some stew at a small restaurant. Like Holland, everybody speaks English, and you don't even have to try to speak French. Ghent is terminally charming. Lots of car-free streets (like most old European towns nowadays - they say the mayor of Paris even wants to ban cars entirely from the inner arrondisments, except for residents). Ghent has those step-ladder facades like holland - high and polychrome. And beautiful towers and half-timbered houses. It was an extremely wealthy cloth-trading city at one time. They are still very proud of their lace and tapestry fabric.

And on to R-dam. After about an hour there, we headed home. We stopped for dinner outside Lille at a little town called Hem, at a restaurant called L'Hempenpont (or something - I considered this uncannily appropriate), which claimed to have been in continuous operation for more than 200 years. It had a cheery wood fire in the bar (which was nice, because it was a bit chilly), and a big tiled hearth in the dining room, which was decorated to make you feel as though you were in a kitchen. The place was filled up after we sat down, on Sunday night, and the food was terrific, and at @26 euros ($30) for three courses and coffee, it was quite a bargain, as I have learned.

I started with a local cheese baked in a fine pastry shell, followed by perfectly rose calve's liver, served with sweet red cabbage and endive braised in a strong, brown stock. Then a flaming Norman tarte (apple flamed with calvados at the table) for dessert. I drove the last 200 km to Suresnes, which was pretty easy. You can go 130 km/hour, whcih is about 85mph, I think. We got home around midnight. The whole trip of more than 600 miles roundtrip took about 15 hours, but it was quite comfortable.

Apparently there was another big straight-line-wind storm of the kind that damaged much of France a few years ago. It didn't hit Paris this time, though, and I didn't noticse any damage in Belgium. I guess most of the damage was in Germany.