Urban poetry

Brussels, away from the touristy Centre Ville.

The poster on the old church reads Life escapes us, but art gives it back.

Saturday reflections

Street repair in Brussels.

I've been watching way too much television over the past several weeks, and it has been in equal parts revealing and excruciating. A few months ago I had never seen a single Lifetime movie, and now I have seen several. For a while they had the only storylines I could follow apart from half-hour sitcoms I'd already seen multiple times. (It was especially easy because they all seem to have variations on the same plot -- evil person pretends to be someone/something they're not and targets nice family.)

And this, I'm embarrassed to admit, was after I was back home with a universe of television channels to pick from. In the hospital in New York I didn't watch much TV, but I heard a lot of it from the next bed, mostly Judge Judy and daytime talk shows. In Brussels it was a lot of second tier BBC and Arrow dubbed in French.

I've yet to make it more than two episodes into any of the dozens of new series I could be watching, but that was also often the case before I got sick. I'm open to recommendations.

Early morning, Brussels

This is my room at the 9Hotel in Brussels, where I spent two nights to break up the long trek home from Rwanda.

I loved this light.

Urban poetry

If one of the top tourist attractions in your beautiful city is inexplicably a small statue of a young boy peeing, you might as well have some fun with it.

Here is the Manneken Pis feeling sportif. He's dressed in one of his hundreds of costumes several times a week according to a published schedule.

From inside the Town Hall

This view of the tower was taken from the interior courtyard.

La Maison du Roi

In Dutch, this building is called the Broodhuis, or Bread House, referring to the first building on the site in the 12th century. The French name King's House seems more appropriate to the extremely Gothic ruffles and flourishes of this 1873 renovation.

More of the Grand Place

Some of the guild halls (or maybe gilt halls would be more appropriate) along the west side of the square. (I posted a similar picture to the one on the left last November, but this one is much better.)

A really Grand Place

Someday I'll go to the Grand Place in Brussels with a wide-angle lens. But I did have better light and a better lens than last November.

This is the Town Hall, built in the 15th century. It's actually the only remaining medieval building in the square; the other buildings were damaged or destroyed by the French in 1695 and restored.

Saturday reflections

The Grand Place in Brussels. When I arrived in Belgium I spent one night in Brussels before heading on to Mons and Ghent, and two more nights on my way back from Africa. I didn't take many pictures, especially during the second stay when I was having trouble remaining upright, but I did go back to the Grand Place with a better lens and was rewarded with better light.

Jesus blows up balloons all day

Obviously this is not a gorilla.

Apologies for the non sequitur, and I will get back to Rwanda posting eventually. But this bubble man near the Grand Place in Brussels made me smile, the morning I arrived from Kigali and I was sick and cold and had five more hours to kill before I could check into my hotel. 

Whatever it was I had in Africa came back, and I've spent most of the past two days with doctors. The good news is that it probably isn't typhoid because I don't have a fever; what it actually is remains a mystery.

So I'm grateful that this picture still makes me smile this morning, and that whatever is going on with my body is happening in New York and not in Kigali.

Saturday reflections

One more, highly saturated, look at the Palais des Congrès in Brussels (you can see me taking the picture in the bottom left.)

It's been a week of pratfalls and First World Problems, and I won't quite relax until I'm lounging by a pool in Santiago Sunday night. First my Kindle died, and I had to rush order a new one. Thursday night it was my laptop, and yesterday morning was spent at the Apple store, after having to beg for an emergency last-minute half vacation day. Somewhere in there I pulled something in one of my knees and spent a night yelping in pain every time I turned over, wondering if I was going to have to cancel the trip because I was not able to climb into a Zodiac and I risked being abandoned on the shores of Antarctica.

The knee is better though stiff, the laptop is better though sluggish, the new Kindle is here and loaded up, and I am more or less ready to get on my 5 pm flight. I still have to clear out the top shelf of my bedroom closet, which is being renovated along with my kitchen while I am away, and pack up my wineglasses and the last of my pantry. Then -- fingers crossed -- it's off to Santiago and points beyond.

Stay tuned!

Random things I saw in Brussels

Urban poetry

It was gray and drizzly in Brussels the day I took this picture, but apparently that's no reason not to give your bed linens a thorough airing.

Saturday reflections

This looks like another set of Christmas decorations, but it's actually just the everyday gilt of the Grand Place in Brussels, doubled and tripled by some obliging windows.

Christmas in Brussels

All of the streets in the old town in Brussels were full of lights and ornaments; some of them might be there year-round, but I'm pretty sure these ornaments are just for Christmas.

More windows at Les Galeries

Not everything for sale there was edible, but I have to admit most of the pictures I took were of sweets of one kind or another. Here are a few exceptions.

Mary

The window display at this shop wasn't as over the top as some of the others, but they did sell the single best thing I ate in Brussels: see those large round chocolate objects in front? Up close they look sort of like Mallomars. And in fact, they are Mallomars -- that is, if Mallomars were made with butter cookies and homemade marshmallow and dipped in fine Belgian chocolate.

I bought a bag as a gift, and then an extra for myself just to try them, and the fact that I landed at Heathrow with the bag of cookies intact shows that I am capable of more self-discipline than I sometimes give myself credit for.

Also, that it was a very short flight.

Les delices de St-Hubert

Christmas shopping

For the last week before Christmas, I'm going to post some of the many pictures of Christmas windows and decorations I took in London and Brussels.

Les Galeries Royales St-Hubert in Brussels is supposed to be Europe's first shopping arcade. Since it is in Brussels, every other shop seemed to sell chocolate that was almost as expensive as the leather gloves and luxury handbags. Store windows to follow....

It's creepy and it's kooky, mysterious and spooky

The Museum of Musical Instruments from the outside -- the building was originally a department store, but I'm not sure that's an adequate explanation for the architecture.