I’ve Been a Tourist

Being the geek that I am and being on the door step of the tallest boat lift in the world and knowing that we wouldn’t have the chance to get a look at the structure when we use it to ascend tomorrow I went to have a closer look.  Can you imagine my delight when I found it had a visitor centre and a lift to the machine room and observation platform all for €6.

It’s HUGE, the whole place vibrates when the machines start to lift or lower the chambers.

This is one of the 2 machine rooms.  There is one each side for each chamber.

This will be our holding mooring tomorrow

This is where the chamber sits at the bottom

This is a 1350 ton barge exiting the lift.  This is about 85 long and looks tiny from up here.

My new camera is simply awesome.  Through one of these top line of windows to the left of the wide beam on the right I was able to zoom in to see our boats over a mile away.

Avalon can bee seen on the side

An MR 

These are reduced photos for the internet but on the actual 13.5mp photos the names can be clearly read.

Avalon and MR are also on this photo. Can you see them?

This is it on the original size. Hopefully it will upload in full res.

Today at the automatic lock we went through yesterday there were loads of divers.  We assume they were police divers on exercise.

I forgot to mention yesterday about my train trip.  It was 2 firsts for me.  1st time I have travelled 1st class on a train, which in Belgium is only a small extra and the first time I’ve been on a double decker train.

Like this one

We are looking forward to tomorrow and our ascent in the monster machine.