Day 39, 21 July 2014, Bruges, Belgium, Monday. Thank god it's Monday. It means a couple of museums I want to go to are shut and I'll just have to go tomorrow. Which therefore means I have time to write about The Friet Museum, Choco-Story (Chocolate Museum) and, believe it or not, Lumina - the Domestic Lamp Museum. Now I know at first glance chips, chocs and light bulbs may sound at least slightly odd... or even as boring as bat-s**t. But wow - I mean wow - I have learned so much today my head is exploding. I thought a museum devoted to fries could realistically have been set up by a teenager with a sack of old spuds and a deep fat fryer, but this was brilliant - literally from the first paintings of spuds in Mayan/Aztec art it charts the journey of the humble potato across planet earth and onto the plate. Really very cool. The Chocolate museum was equally fascinating, designed by the same folks, and features a praline-making demo including tasting the silky little seashell morsels filled with hazelnut cream (Praline Man is pictured above). The Lamp museum was a bit of an accidental visit really - one of those combined tickets, but again - I now know how olive oil is made and have seen lamps from Egyptian times all the way through to the current eco-friendly bulbs. Particularly interesting was the question of how the tombs in the Valley of the Kings were painted... since there's no evidence of soot in them (which we can attest to). There are however inscriptions in a temple in Egypt that show something resembling an electric bulb! I read an article recently on potato light bulbs... so it really made me wonder. Footsore & weary after my learning curve, I chose a street I hadn't been down before and trended towards home for an afternoon sorting photos and thinking deep thoughts about the origins of light.
To read the article on spud-power go to:
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20131112-potato-power-to-light-the-world