Hi everyone. Now that I caught up on the France river cruise, and I have been in Belgium for a few days, let's get the party started.
I was up at 3am (actually, I didn't sleep much knowing I had to be up at 3am) on Thursday, 27 July. A car service was picking me up at 4am to head down to Logan airport in Boston to catch my 7:00am 'let's start the Europe Walk-About' flight. First to Heathrow, then to Brussels.
The flights weren't to bad. The one from Boston to London was on time. Unfortunately, the one from London to Brussels left about an hour late. Weather delay almost certainly; this part of Europe has been somewhat cool and a lot of showers in recent days. That meant that I wasn't ready to leave the airport until about 11:45pm, and the hotel shuttle stopped at 10:30pm. So, my first taxi ride of the trip!
I had elected to stay in an airport hotel the first night, so Friday morning I headed over to my Airbnb in the St. Catherine area of central Brussels. It was a very homey one-bedroom apartment on the 2nd floor (read 3 floor for those of us from the US). But for once, there was an elevator. No air-conditioning, but I didn't really need it with this weather.
On Friday, I was meeting a (up to now, Zoom only) friend and his wife for the afternoon and a personal walking tour of Brussels. Jan, Heidi and I wandered grabbed a quick bite to eat and then started walking. The place we met was in the middle of a very, very, very, very busy area full of tourists. The benefit of walking with residents of Belgium (from a small town outside the city, was that we soon left that area and were in much less busy areas. Sometimes, we were actually the only ones on the street on which we were walking!
I am just including a few of the photographs I took while we wandered. Some administrative squares and other sites (ncluding a statue of Jacques Brel) ...
a couple of churches (one of which my hosts had never been into before!)...
the place where the King's office is (it's called the Royale Palace of Brussels, but he doesn't live there), and sculptures across the street in the park...
One interesting story I was told. As I'm sure you probably know, Belgium is a constitutional monarchy, with the king the head of state and the prime minister the head of the government. The monarch's main duty is to sign legislation into law (royal assent). Until 1990, Belgium was one of the few European countries where abortion was still illegal. However, in 1990 a law was passed to liberalize abortion in Belgium. The King notified the Prime Minister that he could not in good moral conscience sign the law. In order to avoid a constitutional crisis, the king and the Prime Minister made an agreement, deciding to use a constitutional mechanism to declare the king unable to govern, at which point the government enacted the law "in the name of the Belgian people". After the law was enacted, the Federal Parliament voted to reinstate the king the next day.
And finally, to end this post, a couple of pictures of wildflowers I saw along the way. If you follow this blog, you know how I feel about trees and flowers!
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