The sun was shining when I got up this morning - and there was never a drop of rain or snow all day. It was still icy cold and I had to bundle up - but it was a great day for walking around Brussels.
I started off with a lesisurely breakfast at the hotel and then wandered over to Grand Place. There was just a handful of tourists about at 9 in the morning and one crazy homeless woman bouncing around singing. I have seen very, very little of that here....one or two pandhandlers and a couple of street musicisians. But this woman was a doozy (Mom - not as bad as the one in Atlanta though). I did a video of her and will send to some of you.
One of the nice things about a city on Sunday morning is the church bells - they rang all morning and with a number of cathredrals in town, it was beautiful. I stopped in a couple of the churches - even caught one in the middle of mass.
ANd I wondered around the royal square and hung out at the palace. The flag was flying which means that the royals are in the country. The only time you can tour the palace is while they are on holiday which is from late July to early September.
Wandered in and out of some other historic buildings and then walked thru the antique district. Someone had the office had told me about an outdoor antique market there every Sunday so I walked thru that. I wasn't too impressed - I'm not that big on antiques anyway - they are usually pretty much overpriced and this was no exception. Barbara, there was some beautiful blue glass peices that you would have liked, but again they were too pricey.
The highlight of the day, though, was the Museum of Fine Arts. Now, we have some mighty fine art museums in America - like the Metropolitan in NY, my favorite the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and of course the one in Chicago will take your breath away, and the Western Heritage Museum in OKC is high up there in my book (and I've seen a LOT of art museums).
But, sweet peas, you have not seen art until you have seen it in Europe. This place was awesome!!! It's actually two museums - one ancient art and one modern art - I spent three hours there and didn't even get to the modern side, let alone see everythign I wanted to on the ancient side. But, I am hoping to get back before I leave to finish it up. There are works by Rubens, Rembrandt, van Dyck, and Brueghel just to name a few well-known artists. My favorite of all was one called "THE TOWER OF BABEL" by Able Grimmer - someone I have never even heard of. Here is a link to a picture of it on the web:
http://www.bible-history.com/past/tower_of_babel_painting.html
One of the Brueghel's was really unusual - FALL OF THE REBEL ANGELS - in fact, it was grotesque almost - really weird faces and beasts.
Well, I could go on and one about the art I saw here. ANd not just paintings - many, many wonderful sculptures - but the paintings are what just keeps you riveted. ANd some of them are so HUGE!!!! YOu can study just one for an hour and not see all the nuances.
If this museum is 1/10 of what the Louvre is, then all I ask for the rest of my life is to see the Louvre. In fact, since work contraints are going to keep from going to Paris this week, I have decided that I want to spend the week of my birthday there - and spend my birthday itself in the Louvre. Wouldn't that be something? I'm going to start saving my pennies - anybody want to join me? Of course, everything in my life depends on my work schedule, but hopefully that will be during some downtime.
Let's see, I also went to a chocolate museum. Ho hum. It was nothing compared to the Hershey factory the kids and I went to in Hershey, PA a few years ago.
I forgot to tell you yesterday about the atonium. The World's Fair was here in 1958 and this is a model of an atom - but it's 165 billion times bigger than the real thing. Pretty cool.
Well, my feet hurt, my legs hurt, and I'm all bundled up here in the hotel but I still can't get warm so I think I'll crawl under the covers with a book.
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