Am Tunnel

For a wet Sunday afternoon activity, we visited a most unusual art gallery. The BCEE bank here in Luxembourg has linked several of its buildings on the Bourbon plateau by extending part of the pre-existing underground casemates of the ancient city fortress. As a public gallery, the "Am Tunnel" hosts mainly works by local artists. It also houses a permanent collection of the Luxembourg born, American photographer, Edward Steichen (1879-1973). The works of Steichen were brilliant, the rest, a little less so.

The Hague

We spent a couple of days in The Hague together with Craig, Sophie and Elliot in what was best described as a “contained” apartment. Retiring to bed and morning bathroom rituals became, by necessity, precisely choreographed. As an added challenge, the apartment was accessed by a wonderfully geometric, vertiginous staircase.

  

The architecture of The Hague appears quite dissimilar to that of Amsterdam. It is much more like Brussels with many examples of Art Nouveau and Deco styles including a marvellous glazed ceiling shopping galerie.

  

One of the reasons for our visit to The Hague was to see the apparently amazing tulip display at the Keukenhof Gardens. Due to winter’s reticence in moving along, there were no tulips. Holland. Springtime. No tulips?  The closest we came to a tulip was this remarkable ceiling in a department store on the Grotenmarkt.

  

As with many other European capital cities, The Hague has its own controversial Richard Meier designed building. I have always admired his minimalist, ultra-clean white style and this was not disappointing. The city hall and library complex was also immense. The locals have nicknamed it “The Ice Palace”.

The Hague having been the haunt of the other Ingrid for a number of years, we were given a treasure hunt list of must-visit places throughout the city. As some of you might imagine, it seemed to include a lot of very impressive and uncheap shops and restaurants.

  

The Hague landscape is wonderfully punctuated by canals (of course), extensive parks and myriad squares. Whilst most of the latter are paved, some like the irregular shaped Lange Voorhout are delightfully tree-lined and still impressive in their wintry nakedness.

  

On the last afternoon, Craig and I took a wander around the port of Scheveningen which I recalled from a Half Ton Cup held there in 1979. On the yacht club pontoons we saw the usual suspects, but the most elegant “yacht” was the “Estrella”, a converted workboat now apparently used for charter and parties.

  

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Escher and Mondrian

The Hague has a number of world renowned art galleries and museums. The Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, home to many works by Vermeer, Rembrandt, Hals, Holbein, et al, was closed for renovation. Fortunately, the magnificent Escher Museum in the former Royal Winter Palace was open. Ingrid has always been a great fan of his work because of its mathematical connections, so this was a must-do on our itinerary. One is able to see his entire oeuvre and witness the development of his style from the original simple woodcuts to his mesmerising optical illusions and “Metamorphose” series. We highly recommend a visit.

Ingrid’s favourite was “Reptiles”, as she did a university paper on the mathematics involved in this. My favourite was a carpet woven in the image of the lithograph “Rimpeling”.

There was an interesting additional exhibition of “Seeing the world through Escher’s eyes” with some classic optical illusions. As well, there was a room of optical art. As often happens, the exhibits were either pretentious or spectacular.

Battling the unhelpful public transport system of The Hague, we then visited the Gemeentemuseum. It was built in 1931-35 to the design of popular Dutch architect H P Berlage in the modern style of that era. Whilst the exterior is linear and solid, the interior is pretty funky. It houses a very impressive, temporary exhibition of the old masters’ paintings from the Mauritshuis – no photos allowed, unfortunately. Vermeer’s “The Girl with the Pearl Earring” was apparently on holidays in Japan.

In its De Stijl Art Movement section, the Gemeentemuseum houses the world’s most complete collection of Piet Mondrian’s works.  As well as the iconic minimalist geometric works, there were many examples of his earlier styles including my favourite cubist style “The Flowering Apple Tree”.

The museum featured many of the “Neo-Plasticism” works for which Mondrian is best known, including his last painting “Victory Boogie-Woogie”. My favourite is the “Composition with Lines and Colour: III” below. In fact, I am toying with the idea of creating an homage to this for our living room.

As we have often found, the rest of the exhibits were, let’s say, not to our taste. It is always a mistake to read the accompanying descriptive texts – hyperbole is a polite description. Ingrid was particularly affected by a large installation of apparently scrap plastic hanging from the ceiling. Fortunately, the decoration of the building itself went some way to compensate.

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Brussels Weekend

One of our all-time favourite cities is only two hours away by car. Travelling on a group ticket and catching the train just inside the Belgian border makes the trip quite cheap, albeit somewhat longer as we appeared to stop at every village along the way. Hence we found ourselves at the Arlon railway station, a jewel of a building trying to shine in the bitter damp cold of an absurdly early Saturday morning. On arrival in Brussels, we booked in to our hotel in the centre of the old town and together with several hundred other tourists and a shower of rain, we headed to the Grand Place.

  

Despite the weather and the crowds, this unique square is forever impressive. Visiting with our American friend, Joni, a Brussels neophyte, guaranteed the ever-present camera and frequent OMG’s !! To dodge the rain we continued on to one of our favourite locations, the Galeries St Hubert with its over–the-top chocolate shops and quaint book stores.

Despite a wave of demolitions in the mid-20^th century, Brussels still boasts a plethora of Art Nouveau architectural gems, many of them created by the great Victor Horta. Armed with a walking trail map, I attempted to guide Ingrid and Joni on tour of some examples still found nestling among the rest of the inner city’s varied architecture. The cold and abundance or warm shops and cafes eventually put paid to this.

  

On our way back to our hotel we could here a booming brass band in the backstreets around the Grand Place. Then we were witness to an astounding, non-politically correct display of about sixty local burghers and children blacked up and all sporting an outlandish uniform of top hat, tails, neck ruffles  and brilliant scarlet breeches. These were the “Noirauds” of the traditional local children’s’ charity of the Berceaux de Princesse Paola.

  

We had a lovely dinner of Belgian specialties at the Le Paon restaurant. Ingrid booked a window table as this authentic 400 year old building overlooks the Grand Place opposite the town hall.

Sunday morning dawned even wetter, so it was destined to be a museum day. But firstly, we dashed over to the Galeries St Hubert to fill up on hot chocolate and waffles at Ingrid’s favourite breakfast place.

I have always been fascinated by Crystal Palace style structures and will take any opportunity to visit one. In the Parc du Cinquantenaire there are two such structures erected in 1880 – one houses the Autoworld car museum and the other the aircraft museum of the Musee Royale de l’Armee et d’Histoire Militaire. Ingrid very kindly appeared enthused.

Autoworld houses an eclectic collection of magnificent machines, with a major part witnessing the considerable home grown automotive industry which flourished before WWII. Of course, my favourite display was of the competition vehicles including a Renault Alpine A110. Ahh .. memories of the Monte Carlo poster on our bedroom wall.

Across the square is the Musee Royale de l’Armee et d’Histoire. As there was no heating in the hangar-like interior, I was left to my own devices. I had a quick look around as it appeared that much of the display was closed off for maintenance. This is another of the many places on the list to return to in the warmer weather. Still, being up close to something like an F-16 Falcon is quite impressive, if a little frightening.

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