Grand Palace

[stephanos]

Gaah! That's my favourite of the City series. And a very lovely pen this new model looks, too - just as does the vibrant blue (ominous music...)

[Bo Bo Olson]

For the record, the name is "Grand Place," not "grand palace." Think "town square" not "king's house."

 

David

Been there...there is a place to get Genivia gin in a little stoneware 'shot' glass on the square where due to surface tension there is a bulge of gin over the rim...back then I had a real steady hand.

The 640 Grand Place is one of my grail pens....and a lot of others going by the fact of it's cost now.

 

Duval beer can be found on the square too.One of the worlds top beers.

 

Outside of that it a very beautiful place surrounded by the wealthy houses of the rich merchants each being Jones.

[dms525]

Been there...there is a place to get Genivia gin in a little stoneware 'shot' glass on the square where due to surface tension there is a bulge of gin over the rim...back then I had a real steady hand.

The 640 Grand Place is one of my grail pens....and a lot of others going by the fact of it's cost now.

 

Duval beer can be found on the square too.One of the worlds top beers.

 

Outside of that it a very beautiful place surrounded by the wealthy houses of the rich merchants each being Jones.

 

 

I hope you didn't miss the Dandoy shop around the corner and their speculoos!

 

 

 

David

[Nyanzilla]

I already have the old M620 Grand Place. So I won't get the new M800. It is not only too dear for me, I also prefer the smaller size of the 600 series.

[Sharookh]

Beautiful Fountain pen! The toning and twirls remind me a bit of the Bexley Bronze Sands......

[Barkingpig]

I stayed @ an old hotel in the Grand Place almost thirty years ago for a week. The square filled magically with merchants Saturday morning & was the site for a wedding that afternoon. I was amazed to see the wedding couple drive away from the reception in a 1967 Oldsmobile Cutlass convertible! We had dinner late that evening in a nice restaurant overlooking the square; it seemed like we had been spectators to more than was possible in one day.

 

The best waffles from street stalls, amazing black coffee & mussels several nites with those wonderful frites. Grand Place captures a sense of place more vividly than anywhere I have stayed in London or Paris. Seemed still very "old world." The pen seems fitting to my memories of the "Place."

[BayesianPrior]

Barkingpig - what wonderful memories you have of Brussels. Thank you for sharing. This is one of the joys of our hobby which the normalos might not understand at first blush: that a fountain pen can recall memories and recreate a tremendously special day from three decades prior.

 

My own desire to own the M800 Grand Place is much more pedestrian. I have a compulsion to match pen and ink colours and so have been stalking a few tortoises. To my eye, [controversial statement alert!] the Grand Place simply blows the tortoise away. Now I just need to decide between the Grand Place or having a custom brown binde of some sort put on to another M800.

 

ETA: Oh, and the blue swirl in the Grand Place would allow me to use brown or blue ink! Win-win!

Edited January 10, 2016 by BayesianPrior

[Bo Bo Olson]

The worlds best french fries come from Belgium....in Belgium was part of France, when pomfritz was falsely named.

They are fired twice in beef tallow. There are Frenchmen who drive to Belgium to get a good French fry.

My wife is not sure if we got to Dandoy's.

 

Well, I no longer have to drive to Belgium for the worlds best chocolate. An hour away in the Odenwald in Michelstadt, is where I drive now. The man is double world champion. And can't raise his prices, because he can not afford to drive away local custom. Great 'odd' jams, Stolen also. He was on German TV 5 or so times. Gets flown to Japan, and comes back with other directions of taste.

 

Any good Belgium 'gasthaus' has a beer menu....offering some 70-100 different kinds of beer and each or most have their own glass that that type of beer 'must' be served in. (Don't drink Jumpiter lager the cheap bar beer...it's not really beer, unless you need a Bud.) At one I had 'Beef Steak Tommy' with an absolutely gorgeous fresh tomato sauce on it. That made it a perfect steak with perfect french fries.

Bruges, has a northern bouillabaisse, a cream fish stew....oh, I got to go back.

Belgium waffles...loaded with calories of great 'toppings'.

 

In one of the 19th century Worlds Fairs in America when Ice Cream was relatively new** and Belgium waffles was the In thing. He ran out of glass bowls, and made the first ice cream cone. I can only imagine how great that was.....will have one the next time I get to Belgium, for the sheer hell of it. Even if I have to buy a cardboard cup of Ice Cream and plunk in a hot waffle my self.

 

** A woman invented the ice cream machine, another the paper bag.

[grainweevil]

Just noticed a note on pelikanpens.co.uk that this will only be available in two countries, and the UK isn't one of them. I feel so unloved, Pelikan. Not that I was actually going to buy one, but it's nice to at least be tempted against one's better judgement.

[BayesianPrior]

Pre-order sent! Novelli in Rome will be carrying them as well.

 

http://www.novelli.it/en/pens/Pelikan--Souveran%20800--Grand%20Place%20fountain%20pen_2147464886-regular-edition-pen.aspx

[sargetalon]

I have my pre-order in with one of the US vendors. As far as availability, I only know for sure that the USA is in line. I have heard conflicting accounts on other locations. What I've heard is as follows;

 

Pelikanpens.co.uk: No U.K. release planned

Fountain Pen Hospital: USA, Germany, and Japan exclusive

Fritz Schimpf: No German release planned

La Couronne du Comte: Will carry the pen in the Netherlands

Novelli: Will carry the pen in Italy

 

The exact distribution of this release is still unclear to say the least...

[MarkTrain]

Pretty pen. Rivals the Tortoise M800. But the price of $680 is too much and I already have the M620 San Fransisco which I bought new for ~$200. Another problem is the nibs on the newer Pelikans leave something to be desired. Right now I am using either vintage nibs or nibs which I have had custom ground.

[Bo Bo Olson]

I have a semi-flex B from my 400n, in my 605.

Unless it's a W. Germany 800 (because of the nib)...I'd rather have a medium-large 600 than a Large 800.

[inkstainedruth]

It certainly is a pretty pen (I got an ad from Fahrney's in my email inbox this morning). But M800s are way too big for me.

OTOH, maybe I should start scoping out the Bay of Ebil for one of the older 600s....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Christopher Godfrey]

<...the Dandoy shop around the corner and their speculoos> Of course, I'm sure you meant "speculaas"?

[stephanos]

AFAIK, both "speculoos" and "spekulaas" are acceptable (though I only ever heard it called speculoos in Brussels).

 

Anyway, I think I'm going to have to sit this particular one out.

 

It _is_ a very beautiful pen - I actually agree with BayesianPrior that it is more attractive than the M800 tortoise, and I'd love to have it. But the price is now beyond what I can reasonably (or even unreasonably) justify spending on (another) luxury item.

 

And it doesn't help that distribution seems to be geographically limited, meaning I'd need to scramble around to buy from a vendor I've not previously dealt with, located in a different country.

[Bo Bo Olson]

Good luck Ruth.

May Murphy be looking at the seller.

[proton007]

Personally I'm waiting for a M800 Piazza Navona/Athens/Shanghai. The finishes are quite unique.

[BayesianPrior]

Piazza Navona...Don't tease!

[akellens]

Very pretty pen indeed; it will be hard to resist this one (especially being a resident of Brussels).

I pass by the Grand Place quite often.

Below is a quick phone cam pic I took last Saturday; with a bit (or maybe a lot) of imagination you can find the colors of the pen in the picture ;-)

 

 

http://i.imgur.com/kx6fmr5.jpg