Tag Archives: 2014
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Christmas Concert

Strathcona band was preforming a Christmas Concert today at the church downtown.  We have been to the junior high Christmas concert, but the high school kids are in a league of their own.  They are more refined and mature and quite sophisticated in their sound.  They played one very modern piece which was our favourite. […]

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Snow Snow Snow

It is snowing!  At around 5pm today the skies opened up and it started coming down like crazy.  Huge wet snow flakes everywhere.  Only Evelina was happy with this turn of events, we all just looked in disbelief!  I am sure this snow is not going to stick around around for long, but we all […]

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14 Pizza Dinner

You will have to take my word for it, even though the pictures don’t show it, there really were 14 pizza on the dinner menu tonight – each different than the last.  Twelve of them were consumed on site and two went home with us.  There was also bread pudding.  There was a lot of […]

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Home Time

It is finally time to make the landing post and say goodbye to Iceland.  I have been home for a couple of weeks now buried in work.  Not the business work but house work.  There is a seemingly endless list of house chores that need doing, some due to what appears to be plain neglect, some […]

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Masters Class

Masters Class

I finally got around to getting these uploaded, converted and here they are for you to enjoy.  While at Villa Medici, this was the Masters of Piano graduating class, with formalities of the evening being done, everyone was a lot more relaxed and the music they got out of that wooden box with strings and […]

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This is Monza

Monza is an integral part of F1.  It is one of the first 7 tracks that  hosted the F1 championship in 1950.  Since then 64 F1 races were run in Italy and all but one were held at Monza.  Monza together with Monaco, Silverstone in England, and Spa in Belgium are four of the original tracks still used today […]

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Home Alone

It is 10:30pm.  The owner of the villa is staying in the private part of this complex behind a big iron gate, in a huge manicured private garden in a smaller private villa more suitable for a family.  Alexandro the caretaker and Fiona the lady who makes breakfast sleeps next to the kitchen which is […]

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Monza Walkabout

After last night it was slow going  this morning but a race day awaits.  Karen, Carlos and myself are going to carpool since they know where the good parking is but don’t feel like driving their little Lancia on the twisty Italian roads.  We were informed that to have a chance of finding decent parking we […]

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House Of Music

Villa Medici has a different look and feel to it in a daylight.  Last night I just wanted to get to bed, today I had a chance to walk around this place, in its endless maze of hallways and rooms that lead to even more hallways and rooms.  This place is truly huge and on […]

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Finally Here

This is Villa Medici.  I stood and drove around this place for 25 min and parked at least on 3 of the 4 available corners trying to figure out how to get into this place.  Apparently there huge brown door had a large metal knocker that you bang, then the doors open and you are […]

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St. Bavo’s Cathedral

The building is based upon the Chapel of St. John the Baptist, a primarily wooden construction; it was consecrated in 942 by Transmarus, Bishop of Tournai and Noyon. Traces of this original structure are evident in the cathedral’s crypt. The chapel was subsequently expanded in the Romanesque style in 1038. Some traces of this phase […]

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Ghent

Ghent started as a settlement at the confluence of the Rivers Scheldt and Leie and in the Middle Ages became one of the largest and richest cities of northern Europe with some 60,000 people in 1300 AD, 70,000 in 1400 growing to 175,000 Shortly after 1500 AD. Today it is a busy city with a port […]

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Van Landschoot

After the visit at the museum, we spent almost an hour chatting with the grand-daughter of Maurice Van Landschoot and his son Gilbert who not only own but run the museum.  Van Landschoot Family tree traces back over 1000 years.  They were predominantly masons and timber traders.   They were employed to provide their expertise […]

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Main Square

The Markt (“Market Square”) of Bruges is located in the heart of the city and covers an area of about 1 hectare. Some historical highlights around the square include the 12th-century belfry and the Provincial Court (originally the Waterhall, which in 1787 was demolished and replaced by a classicist building that from 1850 served as […]

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On Bruges

Bruges is a relatively small city of about 120 thousand people, double that if you include the metropolitan area.  It is very beautiful and pristine.  It’s a vibrant and alive and obsessively clean and not as busy and commercial as Brussels, a perfect place to get a good taste of Belgium. Very few traces of human […]

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