Diary

On Friday morning we departed to Brussels and we arrived there before noon. They say traffic in Paris is a chaos, but in Brussels it is similar. And yet people are very polite in traffic. Pedestrians are given a free passage at every crossing and when I almost lost my way and ended up in a strange way on the middle of a busy square, people patiently made room for me to allow me back into the traffic stream.
My female appearance was also accepted very nicely. It was 'madame' here and 'madame' there, nobody made a fuss about it.

In Brussels many nice walks can be made. Many route descriptions are available on this Dutch language site. Unfortunately no English translation is available. Walking without a route description is of course possible, but you'll miss a lot of the sights worth seeing.
The first route we did happened to start at the subway station Louiza, which was one of the stops of 'our' streetcar 92.
The route started with some art down in the subway station itself, so we descended into the station to have a look at these wall tapestries. After that we followed the route step by step. Along Waterloo Avenue we admired some very posh shops.
There was one shop that had devoted an entire display-window to one single shoe. Of course the price of that shoe was enough to pay for the window. Another shop had a real door-men to let the customers in. We didn't enter any of these shops.

After passing the Hilton hotel we turned left through a monumental gateway. We passed through a cobble-stoned little street with restaurated 19th century coach-houses on the right side and reached a little park: Egmontpark. In spite of the many signs that forbade this, the lawns were full of young people enjoying the beautiful weather.
We left the park through the Marguerite Yourcenarpassage. There were some texts from the work of this Belgian author carved into the walls, but unfortunately these were too difficult to really enjoy with my limited knowledge of the French language.
We then came into a neighborhood with many antiques and art shops and finally on the 'Grote Zavel'.
It was time for a little break, so we found a place on a terrace and ordered a white beer each. Wow! A white beer costs 4 Euros on the Grote Zavel! From the terrace we tried to locate the different shops that were in our route description.

After this expensive stop on the Grote Zavel we passed through some little streets and reached the 'Kleine Zavel'. We were truly amazed by what we saw there: There is a little park there all surrounded by a wrought iron fence with 48 statues on it, representing the craft-guilds of Brussels. In the middle of the city there is a beautifully laid-out garden here. In the center are the statues of Egmont and Hoorn, symbols of the struggle for liberation from the Spanish Inquisition.

Then the route went back to Waterloo Avenue near the subway station 'Naamsepoort'. Then we went for some shopping. In a shopping mall we were surprised by this androgynous showroom-dummy.
By now my feet were killing me. My new, fashionable white shoes were not made for walking for miles and miles. So we bought a pair of nice, pink sandals that went very well with my orange/pink outfit. And a pair of reading glasses, because my new contact lenses are very good for seeing the sights, but I cannot read a map when I'm wearing them.

We ended the afternoon with a beer and headed back to the hotel.
And then the problems with my contacts lenses really began. I had left our house enthusiastically wearing my lenses, but now that I wanted to take them out, I realized I didn't bring the case to put them in nor the liquid to clean them! The shops had already closed, so I could not but anything anymore. So I did the best I could and packed the lenses in plastic sheets I cut out of a garbage bag. I could not think of a better solution, so I just had to hope for the best...




<< Home