Happy Morning To You
Allow me to declare that listening to The Sky and the Dawn and the Sun by Celtic Woman at exactly the moment the sun comes up is a wonderful experience. I love jetlag going west; you're usually awake by dawn and get to enjoy it in its fullness...
Now, Belgium! It was very relaxing and quite fun. We went shopping for bandes dessinées on various days, walked all over Brussels a few times (both good exercise and fun in and of itself), went to Bruges one day to listen to my mom give a paper... We also visited the Forêt de Soignes one afternoon, which was absolutely beautiful. Unfortunately I was still quite tired that day, but nonetheless it was amazing. I got some great photos. And we also dropped in on Villers la Ville, a ruined abbey not too far from Brussels, which we go to every time we're in Belgium. It's a great place and my dad took a few shots that I'm probably going to use for my senior photo.
I also finally got a Belgian flag. Now I can wear it as a cape.
We stayed with my grandparents as always, and even though they don't have air conditioning it was better than usual. I had a different room, one on the third floor that didn't face the street, so I could keep the windows open at night and it was delightful. The weather was annoying, though – it was hot and sunny almost the whole time we were there; there was only one proper day of rain and cool temperatures and other such more normal Belgian weather. Blah.
One thing I did notice was that there was an inordinate amount of graffiti. And as always, I wish the U.S. had such a good system of public transportation; you can get almost anywhere in Brussels with the tram and métro and a little walking...
I also had the thought that if the worst stereotype people can come up with about a country is a fondness for their (incredibly amazingly delicious) food, that's not so bad, by comparison. The ice cream is amazing (they use more milk than water in Belgium, I believe), the chocolate just blows away anything you can buy in the states, even if it's Belgian in origin, and anyone who has never had real frites belges absolutely MUST if they ever find themselves in their presense. (Because fries are Belgian, not French. And you should try them with mayonnaise – take my word for it, it's delicious. I didn't think the combination would be, but I fell in love at the first bite. It's a different type of mayo than we have over here, by the way.)
And I dreamed up a few ideas in the creative realm of things, some drawings and some writing stuffs and some for a Bionicle card game I tried to do years ago, but never went anywhere, but that I can now that I know Photoshop better.
Now I'm back in Delaware for a day, but after that we're off on our Grand Tour of the northeast. On which I will be, hopefully, able to drop in on a Lego store and grab Takanuva, Bitil, and a few smaller System sets...
~ ToM
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