Bliss

I am not sure I can do Brugge justice in one post. We waited for Saturday so Brian could join us. Although it had of course changed in the 21 years since I'd been, no longer smelling of chocolate as I had recalled and being more commercial, it thankfully retained all the charm of my memories, especially 2 blocks plus away from the Centrum Markt and Berg square. After an ideal lunch, a brief stroll took us to Delisa, a coffee and chocolate stop where we simply had to stop. Hot chocolate (steamed milk plus chocolate block on a stick) made the girls smile.

I had to cull through 241 photos to select these few. I'm not sure what makes it so blissful. Bucolic of course, peaceful, stunning at every turn, it feels like the people who built this town across the centuries and those who live there today really care, genuinely appreciate and further beautify their homes and town. So many gorgeous churches, and they transform the corner of a house into its own place of worship with religious icons embedded into the streetscape. Fanciful door knockers, local lace curtains in every window, colorful doors and flowers.

The canals give waterfront an entirely new meaning. In case it is not obvious, the terrace on the right is wet because it is directly on the canal. We walked and walked and walked, taking in almost every "top 10" sight the map promoted. The girls were joyous, skipping and strolling and observing.

Along the edge of the original town, we climbed one of the windmills, complete with millstones and English explanations. Marveling our way back to the center of town, we did stop at the understandably most photographed spot. I was and remain almost speechless.

Thankfully my family humored me by walking farther. Scenic bridges, quaint buildings, myriad swans, petite almshouses, opportunity for sketching, taking me back to 1990 again. We all loved every minute of it even though in the traditional tourist sense we did not do much at all. I would go back tomorrow.

Love All

Tennis success equals love all. (I realize love all in tennis means zero-zero, but I like the phrase so let's just go with the sweeter interpretation.) We took a chance when we jumped on the #39 tram out toward Rue au Bois and the sports center I found online. French and Dutch were the only language options on their website, so I was unclear before we left if courts were even available to the general public. Our optimism in being able to play was apparent from our tennis outfits donned and racquets in tow. I had researched, wrote down and practiced French sentences such as, "We would like to play tennis. Can we rent a court? What are the fees?" I even practiced saying in French, "Can I schedule a lesson for my 11 year old daughter?" I found people who spoke English once we got there, but one kind woman let me practice my French anyway and she said I did well.

No public free courts found yet, but at this tennis center we could rent a court during lunch hour for their camp session. I also arranged a private lesson for Lucy with the director of the affiliated tennis academy for early next week. That should help her tune up for the USTA Junior Team Tennis Sectional tournament which will be the weekend immediately upon our return. Her team received a wild card invitation for the tournament which is very exciting.

The complex even had a bunch of red clay courts but they were outside and as usual it was threatening to rain so we stuck with an inside hard court. There was a little rust in Lucy's game since she had not picked up a racquet for 3 weeks in Brussels, but she worked it out quickly. The three of us played, Julia was very enthusiastic and positive, and Lucy was mostly patient. Even I felt great hitting the ball around a bit. Somewhere along the line Lucy learned a pretty solid slice serve in addition to some sort of slice forehand. Refreshingly, her various tennis camps, lessons and tournaments taught her a few skills she's retained.

After returning on the tram to Montgomery station, we walked back toward Merode. Destination: the gelato place. In addition to a couple of apples and crackers, that gelato was basically our lunch. Oh well, you can't have perfect nutrition every meal. We continued walking home after polishing off our gelato: lemon for Julia, strawberry plus lemon for Lucy, and for me, bacio (chocolate plus hazelnut) and tiramisu mixed since they did not have enough of either for even a small cup.

Brian is going to stop at the market on his way home from work to pick up some food for dinner. No, we did not fully succeed today on our post-it note plan, as we did not find time for an art museum. But reading, talking, relaxing and a bit of writing won out in our day's flow. Maybe we'll do an art museum frenzy next week.

A Slower Pace

We three girls are trying to approach our last couple of weeks in Brussels on a slightly slower pace. We ran ourselves a bit ragged in Paris, although as Lucy said today, "It's not every day you can climb the Eiffel Tower or go to the Louvre." Since we have a little more time here in lovely Brussels, we can spread out the fun and add in some time to just be. Not to mention that Lucy already had a bad cold last week and then I woke up yesterday feeling horrible with a cold of my own. Tylenol helped and we'd already planned to take it easy. Julia in fact requested a computer free day so I obliged; thus no blog posts yesterday.

So after breakfast and Brian's departure for work Wednesday morning, I suggested a completely geeky management type activity and the girls embraced it. I love them. We each got four post-it notes and on our own wrote down four things we wanted to do over Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Then we put them on the wall and compared and discussed, combining like items and organizing into columns by day. The overlaps really warmed my heart to see that writing and creating art were important to all three of us. Here are the results (initials L=Lucy; J=Julia; M=Mommy to avoid the L/L conflict; brackets show we combined those ideas):

WEDNESDAY

{M - paint (inside or outside or both)

{J - go to the park and paint

{L - visit the park, have a picnic and draw the arc

{J - catch up on writing

{L - do some work in journal and read

{M - sketch in our journals

Wednesday summary = all accomplished. We did journaling and reading all morning, still in our jammies. After lunch we strolled over to Parc du Cinquantenaire and painted and sketched. We did not even go to any markets yesterday, because in the late afternoon we had plans to go visit Brian's office at the EC. Such an international team he has the good fortune to work with while here and so welcoming and kind. It was nice to see where he works and meet some of his colleagues, including one who will come work on exchange in the US in Brian's office in the winter. The four of us went out for dinner afterward.

THURSDAY

J - Europeen Parlament [sic]

M - play games (especially new game and Rat-a-Tat-Cat)

Thursday summary = accomplished, although we never got around to Rat-a-Tat-Cat because we were so into our new game, Mapominoes Europe, given to us by our dear friends the Storers as a travel gift. We learned a lot about Europe from the game, and had fun too. Then we walked over to the European Parliament building, just on the other side of Schuman subway and Parc Leopold, for our tour. So it was an all-around geography, government, history, and politics learning kind of day.  As an extra bonus, we scouted our next painting site/viewpoint in Parc du Cinquantenaire.  And we found an awesome smoothy place, Guapa Juice, a perfect discovery just a short walk from our apartment.

FRIDAY

L - practice tennis

L - gelato

M - go to one art museum

(note: J - go to the water park - this one we elected to postpone for fairer weather since it is barely 70 deg. F here still, mostly cloudy and rainy)

I'll report on Friday after it happens.

Autoworld

There is a very cool museum super close to the apartment in Parc du Cinquantenaire called Autoworld. We got there so quickly today that the girls kept wondering what was wrong; we barely had time to eat our nectarines along the way. The whole time we were there we kept saying how much my Dad, aka Grandpa Dave, would absolutely love it. And we three girls loved it too. So much so that we took 114 photos while there. We did want to get our money's worth, as we had to pay €2,50 (that's 2 euros 50 [cents is implied]) for the extra privilege of taking pictures. That was in addition to our entrance "tariff" and the kids were not free.

Anyway, I don't know how many people are quite as interested in the history of automobile production worldwide, with a focus on Europe, but as usual I wanted to share some of our photos and learnings from another non-art museum. I had hoped to see some art today too, but we are on a low-key cycle this week after the whirlwind of Paris. The rest of our afternoon was spent on lunch, writing, and playing.

First, very early transportation via buggy, pulled by either a horse, donkey or reindeer depending on the country. Next we noticed that some of the earlier cars had gas-lit headlights. I should mention there were hundreds of cars in this place. It was impressive.

I particularly enjoyed the various hood ornaments; this one is from an aircraft designer who dabbled in automotive design. Lucy noticed this was one of the first license plates. I also learned a lot from the placards about the impact of wartimes including materials and fuel shortages on car designs, and how for the first fifty to sixty years of production, often the chassis would be designed by someone besides the car manufacturer. There were luxury cars, sports cars, some racing vehicles (including a few three-wheelers), tiny early Minis and even campers.

No examples of the car my Dad is currently restoring, but we found this old Corvette we thought he'd like. And to the right I share with Erin to please show to my buddy Cayden: does this look like it might belong in "Cars" the movie?

Open for Comments

Friends and Family: I have heard from many of you that you were having an issue posting comments. That was primarily because I had originally set the blog to only allow comments for registered users who were logged in with an OpenID or a Google account. I have now enabled comments by anyone. If you do decide to comment, and I hope you will, please still put your name, or at least your first name. It will be more interactive and informative that way. You can even go back and comment on older posts.

A post does not feel complete without a photo. Yes, Lucy really is getting that big.
And I can confirm the wine is good here. Thanks for reading and sharing! --Lisa

Relaxation with a Moment of Exploration

It was not a completely relaxing day on Monday, 25 July. We did have to take the high-speed train back from Paris to Brussels, with an 8:25am departure time from Gare du Nord in Paris, requiring 2 Metro subway trains plus an RER commuter rail as our final Paris transit trips. Once we got back home to the apartment, Brian had to go to work and the girls and I started the unpacking and laundry routine. We did manage to kick back in the apartment for a while, all of us enjoying the slower pace, then of course had to go to the market for some food.

It wasn't until about 4:00pm that afternoon that I rallied the girls for a short exploratory journey through Brussels. We had read in one of the guidebooks from Pop Pop Bob and Grandma Joyce that there used to be a river running through Brussels called the Senne. I noticed on the Metro map that St. Catherine's Church was a nearby so we exited the Metro at that stop. The church, built in 1854, has seen better days and the front of it was covered with scaffolding indicating it was getting some much needed attention. This view is of the side.

The neighborhood surrounding the church was older and more commercial than the one where we live. It was great to see a different type of place in the city. I since learned that there is an organic farmer's market in the church square. We managed to find the one-block street called Place Ste. Gery that the book had mentioned. We also discovered that this building used to be a market itself and was converted in 1999 to an information center and a cafe. I neglected to mention that the reason we were exploring to find the river is that the city bricked over almost all if it in centuries past so only a small bit remains visible. Thus our quest to find the hidden River Senne.

The book said to look for arches across from the Place. Although I spotted an arched doorway shown on the left, Lucy was deterred by the 'do not enter' looking sign. I urged them in, and we found the courtyard shown on the right. Still not completely apparent that one has found a river.

But yes indeed, we had found this hidden secret. You can see the fish swimming in it and a few lily pads. It is well guarded from swimming, although you'd have no way to get out so that would be an unwise choice. The pictures here show the extent of it. I took the left picture facing to the left; you can see the same 'window' frame in the distant shot above where the girls are standing. The right photo is to the right from the same spot. Then the river just disappears. It was cool and it did feel like a successful exploration because there are no signs that say, "This way to the hidden River Senne."

Cavendish and Cadel

This was Brian's goal: The Final Stage of Le Tour de France 2011, Creteil to Paris Champs-Elysees.

Since the stage ends near the Arc de Triomphe, we stopped there first and climbed only 284 steps to the top (trivial Julia says after 670 steps to level 2 of the Eiffel Tower).

Note the yellow in our outfits, Brian's new hat, plus my "climber champ" scarf.

We had a great view from up there of the boulevard empty and ready for the racers.

We thought this would make Uncle Peter happy.

Turns out that before the race, to entertain fans who started lining the streets before 10:00am (we committed to our spot about 1:30pm), there is something called a caravan.

All these crazy people hired by the major race sponsors dance and zigzag around the course roads with loud music. Some new Australian friends told us they gave away products at the earlier stages.

These are the crowds about 50 minutes before we saw our first racer speed by our spot.

At long last the riders appeared. Miraculously we caught on film the yellow jersey worn by the overall leader and eventual Tour winner, Cadel Evans, in our first photo attempt.

On the next lap (there are eight circuits in Paris, and we saw them coming and going), we caught a glimpse of the green jersey winner for the best sprinter, Mark Cavendish.  He's the chap in the lighter green just to the left of our tree, kindly on our side of the pack.

And there's the mountain climber points champion, Samuel Sanchez, in white with red polka dots.

This is a photo of the pack of riders heading toward the finish line, to our left and they then had to circle back around Place de la Concorde and to the finish. We could not see the finish; we could only hear the French announcer saying multiple times, "Cavendish" the French way, cah-vahn-deeesh, so we figured out that he had won the stage and thus the green jersey. Cadel Evans, at age 34, won his first Tour de France. And we had a great time being part of the event!

Simple Samedi

We made it a simple Samedi (Saturday). We still got tired, but we only had two destinations. First up was the Louvre. Since we arrived by 10:00am, the lines were not long at the pyramid or inside to buy tickets. Our primary goal was to see the Mona Lisa, at Lucy's request, so we made a beeline there. Lucy's comments: it was smaller than she imagined; and why was it so famous? Then we saw a few more Italian and French paintings, followed by Greek glass and ceramics. Although the "first" floor, there were great views of courtyards below.

We finished that floor in decorative arts; the girls perked up in Napolean's apartments. Each crystal chandelier was grander than the one prior. Lucy was so thrilled she moved taking pictures, so most are too blurry. Plush red velvet seats and the enormous dining table were impressive.

Brian wanted to head upstairs for the Flanders and Netherlands paintings. The Rembrandts and the Vermeers were our favorites. As two hours of fine art was enough, we went to lunch at an outdoor cafe (could not find Angelina's). All happy until we got off the subway near Notre Dame, our second stop. It was pouring and windy. Although we wanted to climb the tower, that line was longer and slower, so we just went indoors. The picture of the cathedral here is about the only one we have of the exterior; it was miserable outside.

On and off showers dampened our spirits for the rest of the afternoon. However Lucy had an image of herself eating a baguette as she was walking through Paris, so we obliged. This is a picture of her outside the apartment where we stayed. Some champagne from a recommended local wine shop made Mommy smile at dinner.

Another Day in Paris

Friday 22 July in Paris was a long day ... a hiking up stairs day ... a high views of Paris day ... an extreme transit day including 11 different "segments" we call them including transfers and 7 different subway lines including the funiculaire hillside tram ... so. very. exhausting. ... Great day seeing a lot of Paris.

Upon the excellent suggestion of our host Sebastien, we went to Buttes Chaumont, a park designed by Frederick Law Olmstead. We walked to the tower shown close up and from below and enjoyed a picnic lunch. When we were done we found a cafe near the bottom and Brian and I had very expensive cappuccinos. More transit and more stairs as we headed to Rambuteau metro and the Centre Georges Pompidou, a modern building housing a modern art museum. We were reminded that modern art means just about anything.

This is a model of the UK exhibition at the Shanghai world fair; note the Union Jack. After the Pompidou Museum we walked farther than we wanted to in the rain the Musee Carnavalet, a free museum on the history of Paris. The gardens were nice and the inside was very interesting, at least as much as we could translate from French.

After the park and two museums, we schlepped over to Montmartre and took the funiculaire to Sacre-Couer. More great views from up high and a beautiful church as a bonus. Delicious pizza and salad along the nice shopping street at Montmartre. More subways home. So extremely tired.

Overdid it today for all of us. Fewer activities planned for Saturday.