a day's work

Day 1 of use of the 15-euro multi-museum ticket resulted in 26-euroeachworth of visits if all the discrete entrance charges were to be combined (even though entrance is also combined across groups of similar sites even with individual tickets) but it has to be said that without the multi-ticket system their prices would have to be considerably lower to be anything like worth it. The advantage is that a lot of the museums are in buildings which would be interesting if they were filled with nothing but air and a little security-codger in the corner, fiddling with his badge and occasionally needlessly twiddling the dial on his walkie-talkie. Being in an interesting building is an advantage for a lot of the contents of the museums (which seem to share the non-site-specific works of art, shifting them about occasionally) as I'm still somewhat sick to the back tooth of endless dull pictures of religious scenes (even a good six months after seeing far too many of them in Madrid), especially those which strive to further deplete the very small available amounts of historical accuracy available to any scene from a religious text by painting everyone as dressed in contemporary garb and occasionally substituting the faces of the onlooking crowd with the faces of the family of the entity who commissioned the picture, seemingly just to suck up to the religious administrati of the time. An exception can be made for Mr H Bosch's Last Judgement (currently in the Hospitaalmuseum), just because it features more of his WTF-ery and another reference to bagpipes; there's a set in The Garden of Earthly Delights in the Prado in Madrid which I had assumed to be a one-off bit of oddness but there's perhaps a chance they're a recurring theme, quite possibly as an instrument with which to torment any souls selected to spend the remainder of their eternity in hell.

The little museum bit at the back of the Onthaalkerk Onze-Lieve-Vrouw is not worth any money whatsoever but as the multi-ticket got us in we went for a look after the main bit of the church turned out to be a bit standard, in distinct contrast to the interestingly bare and sparsely-decorated Sint Salvatore yesterday. There are a few tomb-frescoes and a few bits of wooden ecclesiastical furniture and a lump of something described as "it was decided that the fragment was of the True Cross" in a little glass cabinet along with some tastelessly overwrought silverware but nothing particularly stimulating. The Hospitaalmuseum was a former hospitaal, is quarter-full of vaguely medical things, quarter-full of artstuffs and the upper half is full of nowt but an impressive wood-framed roof structure. The Gruuthuuse contains odd bits on the ground floor and a Flemish-only but still mostly vaguely understandable account of the restoration of the building and various others in the city and a little bit about some of the important architects responsible for the city's current appearance, including the bloke who designed Antwerp's railway station. The Arentshuis was a just a couple of rooms but as they contained sketches by Frank Brangwyn they shouldn't be missed.

With an hour to go before everything shut for the day we popped to the Belfort for a trot up the tower in case it turned out to be worth repeating later in the week before the ticket expires. Possibly, it is. The view isn't massively high but it does contain a large number of nice red roofs, the other two large spire things and demonstrates the relative pigglediness of the layout of the central canal-ringed section. It's probably tricky to avoid being at the top bit when the bells go off just due to the amount of time required to wait at various points to let large crowds of schoolchilds through but it's not deafeningly loud, merely just a bit too loud to want to stand there for any length of time with unprotected ears. Unfortunately we were there when the carillon played "Danny Boy" rather than the very slightly more tolerable "Greensleeves" so if I pop back I'll definitely try and time it to avoid discomfort.

A large number of the restaurants on the list provided by the B&B-owner were shut this evening but we eventually found one which seemed worth hanging about for it to open. Turned out to be very nice... my Flemish Stew with Leffe Gravy was a little bit sweet but luckily only because of the beer rather than the addition of any fruit or anything else which doesn't belong with beef. Nicky's Flemish Fish Stew had a couple of prawns in but seemed to be proper fish rather than eels.