Friends, here is Part 2 of my travelogue of Janice's and my recent trip to Belgium. By now, you've probably seen my report on last month's journey to the U.S. Southwest and Part 1 of our European vacation, in which we met part of my father's side of the family to celebrate the baptism of my niece Ava.

Late in the evening of Monday, 29 May 2006, Peter drove Janice and me and Franco & Alice F. in the rental van around Brugge (Bruges) in an attempt to photograph the city's spires as they were lit up. While we were unable to get to the center of town because of one-way streets, we did get to see the city's gates and some nice windmills.

On Tuesday, May 30, Ava's godparents Frank & Alice returned to New York. Peter and my mother stayed with Ava, who was fighting an ear infection; Peter's wife Kelly, who had a throat infection; and Kelly's mother Maureen, who had twisted her ankle on the cobblestone streets of Brugge (Bruges). My father got together with his brother, Guido (who had baptized Ava), but they didn't go very far, partly due to late spring rains.

However, Janice and I followed our original plan and took a train for a day trip to the nearby city of Ghent. After deciphering the schedules at the train station (while mass transit is generally better in Europe than in the U.S., we had some difficulty finding and reading signage), we found ourselves again crossing the scenic flat landscape of Flanders. Small towns and farms, unchanged for centuries, exist alongside modern highways and power plants.

We took a trolley from the train station into the old center of Ghent. Like Brugge, it was a center for commerce and art where guilds vied for power with local and foreign aristocrats. Unlike Brugge, which has extremely well-preserved medieval architecture, Ghent has more of a mix of modern buildings and Romanesque and Renaissance churches. It felt more like a living city than a museum piece, but each place we visited had its own charms (see the photos I've posted at Yahoo).

Janice and I walked through the marketplaces of the Graslei and Korenlei, admired the antique facades of the Patershol, and looked at an old cannon and a statue of Jan Van Eyck, whose triptych "Adoration of the Mystic Lamb" is one of the premier paintings at St. Bavo's Cathedral. Beguinages, once refuges for laywomen and now convents and schools, were near still more book and chocolate shops.

St. Nicholas Church had more art, and we took an elevator to the top of the Belfort, or belfry, just as Franco & Alice had done (on foot) in Brugge. Not only did we get to see inside the impressive architecture and get a panoramic view from the center of Ghent, but we also got to descend some very narrow winding stairs. Later, we enjoyed the restored Het Gravenstein, or the Castle of the Counts, where we also visited the torture museum.

Alas, all good things must come to an end. We had dinner with my family one more time in Belgium before taking the train the next morning from Brugge to Brussels, they flying back to Boston on Wednesday, May 31. The past few weeks have been very busy at work as new copy editor Carla D. began at CW, and my latest article (I've occasionally written profiles) was published. Janice and I had to cancel plans to meet with Cliff & Eliza Y. due to continued rain.

My D&D3.5 "Vanished Lands: Seekers of Lore" heroic fantasy campaign came to a bittersweet end for now with the usual seasonal turnover and scheduling challenges. Byron V.O. and family moved to St. Louis to follow a job, and Paul J. returned from college. My D20 "Mutants & Masterminds" 2nd Ed.: "Drake's Port" superheroic scenarios got off to a slow start, partly because the Boston-area role-players have few copies of the core rulebook for character creation.

As for recent genre entertainment, thanks to in-flight movies, I've caught up a bit. Queen Latifah was amusing in the culinary-themed romantic comedy "Last Holiday," and the revisionist fairy tale "Hoodwinked" wasn't as annoying as I had feared it would be. A recent glut of child-oriented computer animation has turned me back toward hand-drawn animation and Asian anime.

Emma Thompson's "Nanny MacPhee" was a slapstick latter-day "Mary Poppins" with a dash of Tim Burton's style and was also reasonably entertaining. Muscular action flick "Transporter 2" had a weak plot and worse dialogue, but the "Bourne Supremacy" was a well-cast thriller, if different from the Robert Ludlum novels I read back in high school.

We also rewatched the spectacular but long remake of "King Kong" and adaptation of C.S. Lewis' fantasy "The Chronicles of Narnia: the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe," both of which are still in the shadow of the written and film versions of "The Lord of the Rings."

I borrowed Beruk A.'s DVD of "Free Enterprise," a satire of the "Star Trek" fan subculture that was still respectful of its inspiration and audience, not unlike "Comic Book: the Movie" or "Galaxy Quest." Unfortunately, the direct-to-video "Brainiac Attacks" was not a worthy successor to the animated "Superman" series of the 1990s, let alone to the rest of the Bruce Timm/Paul Dini version of the D.C. Universe (including "Batman," "Justice League Unlimited," and to a lesser extent, "Static Shock" and "Teen Titans").

Speaking of Superman, while I'm looking forward to "Superman Returns" in movie theaters later this summer, I enjoyed Kevin Burns and Bryan Singer's documentary on the comic book superhero's history on A&E. I expect it to be an extra on the inevitable DVD. Among other recent acquisitions, I've been enjoying Buster Crabbe in the 1930s "Flash Gordon" serials.

I had a happy fanboy moment when "Batman Begins'" Christian Bale briefly shared a stage with the cast of "Superman Returns," including Christopher Reeve look-alike Brandon Routh, at the MTV Movie Awards! I didn't know most of the nominees for this year's Tony Awards, however. I hope to squeeze in "Superman Returns" and "Pirates of the Caribbean 2" amid the next few weeks' events.

On Saturday, June 10, Janice and I went to the bookstores of Harvard Square, Cambridge, although my favorite local role-playing shop, Pandemonium Books and Games, has moved to Central Square. We also ate at the Border Café, our favorite Tex-Mex restaurant, and hung out among the Asian food stands at the Dragon Boat Festival on the Charles River.

This past Saturday, June 17, Janice and I drove out to Worcester, Massachusetts. We visited the park and science center of the Ecotarium, the festival and weapons demonstrations at the Higgins Armory Museum, and comic book/game shop "That's Entertainment." I still have to set up our air conditioner, as temperatures have finally risen to the 80s F.

This coming weekend, I'll be hosting and running a D&D3.5 "Vanished Lands" one-shot for James B.'s 12-year-old nephew Joey and friends on Saturday, 24 June 2006, and on Sunday, I'll be meeting Ron J.K., who'll be up from Westchester visiting his brother and family in Brookline, Mass.

Janice will be visiting her immediate family in Upstate New York around Independence Day, but I have to work on Monday, July 3. On the other hand, I'll be taking a four-day weekend after that to visit friends in metropolitan New York and another one in August to visit family and friends in Virginia. In the meantime, stay cool! -Gene

Friends, I hope that the past few weeks have treated you well. Janice and I had a good time during our recent trip to Europe for the baptism of my niece Ava. Here’s the first part of my vacation report.

On Thursday, 25 May 2006, Janice and I flew from Boston’s Logan Airport to Dulles International Airport in Virginia, where we had a five-hour layover at the United Air Lines hub. We then sat on the runway for an additional two hours due to a mechanical problem.

Fortunately, the remainder of our travel to Belgium was uneventful. I read a stack of newspapers and a few issues of Wizard magazine. Janice read several mystery novels, including The Italian Secretary. Caleb Carr’s Sherlock Holmes pastiche was a good imitation of the “Hound of the Baskervilles,” but not as tightly plotted as The Alienist.

Janice and I also watched a few in-flight movies (more on that later) and tried to sleep. We then took a train from the airport, changed lines in Brussels, and were met in Brugge (Bruges in French and English) by my father and the gracious proprietor of the Hotel Egmond.

Rather than succumb to jetlag, we dropped off our bags at the Aramis suites and met with the rest of the U.S. contingent: my parents; my younger brother Peter, his wife Kelly, and their daughter Ava; Kelly’s mother Maureen; and Franco & Alice F., Ava’s godparents-to-be. My immediate family and Maureen came from Virginia, and Frank & Alice came from New York, near where Peter and I grew up.

We ate lunch and began walking around the cobblestone streets of Brugge, which has kept much of its medieval architecture and ambiance. Horse-drawn carriages took small groups of tourists (mainly British, Francophone Walloons, and a few Germans and Americans) past bistros, quaint houses, and leafy courtyards. We were a little tired that Friday night, but the later sunsets there (10:00 p.m., compared with 8:00 p.m. in New England) threw us off more than the time difference.

On Saturday, May 27, we piled into a rented van and automobile, and Peter and my father drove south to Kortrijk, the town where my father’s brother is a priest. We went to the church of Father Damian (a missionary who attended to lepers in Molokai, Hawaii), where we met the Belgian branch of my family.

In addition to Father Guido, or Uncle Do, my father’s sister Miet was there, as well as her adult children: Tom, Jill, and Lien. Tom just opened a hotel on the coast and is married to Pascale, with one daughter, Marie. Jill works in Brussels, where she lives with son Elias and boyfriend Roberto. Lien has taken over the Didakites business from her late father and is married to Louis, with two kids, Jerome and Justine. My cousins’ children range in age from 4 to 13.

My father is the eldest of his siblings. Tom and Jill are about Janice’s age, and Lien is younger than us but has the oldest children. Ava recently passed her first birthday, and my parents had traveled to the Philippines to celebrate the 80th birthday of one of my mother’s sisters.

Unfortunately, the French branch of my family couldn’t attend, since my father’s other brother, Jan, a baker in Bordeaux, was in Corsica for the recent wedding of his daughter (my cousin) Katje. Janice hopes to see her own family in Upstate New York or eastern Pennsylvania later this summer.

Ava’s baptism went well. Uncle Do did the blessings, aided by godfather Franco. I gave one of the scripture readings, which was fortunately in English. The entire family was joyful at the happy occasion for a reunion, and the younger cousins entertained us all.

We were given a brief tour of the church, rectory, and community center, which continues the good works of Father Damian. Due to pilgrimages, my uncle spends much of his time in Italy and was even planning a trip to Brazil. A cocktail hour and lunch at an upscale restaurant followed, and we changed into more casual clothes and dodged the rain to reconvene in a local pub later that afternoon.

Speaking of rain, while not as devastating as the past month’s worth of deluge in New England, the weather in Belgium was cool (50s F) and damp, like the climes of Great Britain or the U.S. Pacific Northwest. While a bit depressing at times, the showers didn’t stop us from seeing anything. I channel-surfed through local music television only once.

Since many museums and shops were closed or had shortened hours on Sunday, we took a canal cruise when the sun briefly shone that morning (see my Yahoo photo site). We also walked past antique vendors, an old fish market, and numerous churches, several of which held art treasures from the past 800 years.

For example, near the Markt (market square) and Burg (including the Belfort, or clock tower, and city hall), the Basilica of the Holy Blood contains a vial of blood-crusted cloth said to be that of Christ himself. As an amateur scholar of Holy Grail legends and coinciding with the premiere of the movie adaptation (to mixed reviews) of the popular and controversial “Da Vinci Code” book, this was timely.

Janice and I had missed a procession the preceding Thursday featuring people in medieval garb celebrating the arrival of the vial from the Holy Land (either Jerusalem or Constantinople) during the Crusades. My father, Maureen, and Frank & Alice did go to that pageant, which also featured the reenactment of scenes from scripture and history.

However, we did get to see the relic because of the holy day, and we also admired the Romanesque, Renaissance, and other layers of art in the church itself. We also got to see in the Church of Our Lady a statue by Michelangelo of the Madonna and Child that was the only work of his to leave Italy during his lifetime. Janice and I walked through the Groeningemuseum, mainly through the galleries of early Flemish art by Jan Van Eyck, Hans Memling, and Hieronymous Bosch.

On Monday, May 31, we had to cancel our plans due to Ava’s worsening ear infection, Kelly’s throat infection, and Maureen’s strained ankle, not to mention continued rain. Originally, my parents, Janice, and I were going to drive through the Flemish countryside, visiting dairy farms, a cheese factory, and World War I battlefields, while Peter would take the rental van with Kelly, Ava, Maureen, and Franco & Alice into Brussels for sightseeing and shopping.

At the reception following Ava’s baptism, my cousin Jill had invited us to dinner at her place in Brussels. While Kelly, Ava, and Maureen would stay back in Brugge, we would go into the capital of the European Union for museums and another family gathering. My aunt Miet also invited us to come out to her place in the port of Oostende.

However, Janice and Alice found that many museums in Brussels are closed on Mondays, and since Peter wanted to stay with his ailing wife, daughter, and mother-in-law, taking the train for souvenir shopping was looking less attractive.

My mother also wanted to stay close to the patients. After driving around late one night in search of an after-hours pharmacy, Peter & Kelly ended up calling doctors to visit (with help from the hotel staff; if only such house calls were still available in the U.S.) three times, mainly for Ava.

While we hated to disappoint Jill, Roberto, and young Elias, the U.S. party ultimately decided to stay in Brugge. The so-called Continental breakfast offered by the Hotel Egmond was an understatement, featuring pate, prosciutto, and waffles. Swans and other waterfowl floated gracefully through the Minnewater park near our hotel, some convents, and manor houses.

As it turned out, the weather improved briefly, and we did most of our souvenir shopping (mainly chocolates for co-workers) in town. I have never seen so many chocolate stores in such a small area, each featuring unique culinary delights. We also took cold cuts back to our suites to save money on some meals.

In addition, we went to an interesting chocolate museum, which featured its history from the Mayans to European aristocrats to small-scale manufacturing. Of course, there were free samples… Janice and I later popped into some bookstores. We also enjoyed the other local specialties: beer, seafood, cheeses, and frites (misnamed “French fries” by U.S. soldiers in World War I). The food and service were consistently excellent!

While Janice, Frank, and Alice went to the diamond museum, I went to an impressive comic book store. In Europe and Japan, graphical storytelling doesn’t have the children-only stigma it does in the U.S.; on the contrary, many titles are for adults only in a number of genres. Everyone decided that the lace museum was too far to walk, but Janice and I caught a demonstration. Uncle Do and Tante Miet joined us for another pleasant dinner.

In my next installment, I plan to discuss Janice’s and my side trip to the city of Ghent before returning across the Atlantic Ocean, recently viewed movies, and the belated start of summer in the Boston area. In the meantime, take it easy, -Gene