Payment for shipping Tulip was required to be in the Wallenius bank account one week prior to departure.  So we arrived here early just to go to their bank in Zeebrugge yesterday and found out we were not allowed to make the deposit unless we also had an account.  We spent almost the entire day getting an alternative solution and I won’t go into that long frustrating saga.  That incident reminds me of our renter trying to put the rent money into our Chase account a few months ago but she had misplaced our account number and the bank absolutely would not let her put the money in our account.  Our renter even pointed out that they could look on our account and see that same deposit each month.   Only after phone calls to higher headquarters did they make an exception.  It sure wasn’t this complicated in the olden days to pay people.
I was not looking forward to being in Zeebrugge for almost a week but we parked at an informal Aires last night that at first glance was not appealing at all. 
The oddity though was seeing at least 30 other RV’s here and wondering why.  Now we know.  There’s a small park next to us and on the other side is the yacht harbor.  Straight in front of us is an enormous round deck (with seating) over the water to watch the boats being unloaded by the huge cranes.  There’s also a huge flower display in the shape of an anchor.
Since we don’t have much to do for a few days I decided to try and learn HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography and processing.  Some people dislike the looks of HDR pictures but it’s a novelty for now.  The pictures on this post were all taken within just yards of our RV using HDR.  You might notice a watermark on some of the pictures.  That is because I have a trial version of the software.






Sunday, 31 July
I took the  picture below because the lady is so dressed up to go bike riding. That’s not an unusual sight in Europe as women wear dresses often and it doesn’t matter what the occasion. People are dressed in a much more stylish way here. Even the elderly ladies are wearing the knee length leotard pants with a short over dress/long blouse.
The cranes are quiet today because it is Sunday, otherwise they are working 24 hours around the clock loading and unloading ships.

I didn’t use HDR on this picture but tried something called tone mapping.