Brussels!
Brussels’ Christmas market was all lights and food and people and good smells! I popped into a store named “250 Beers” with staff who were having a great time. I bought a beer called “Hercule” just because it had a great Agatha Christie/Belgian name. The next day, I bought a really big Delirium Christmas Beer bottle. The guy used it for doing curls so he could show off his bicep. Ooh Aah.
Waltzing in the Grand Place in Brussels! It was so
beautiful. So many couples spinning around the huge Christmas tree, wearing
long skirts and white ties, or not, surrounded by the lovely old buildings.
This is the second year they have done this around the giant Norway spruce Christmas tree. It was magical! Unfortunately, no one asked me to dance. ;-)
THE WALTZING IN BRUSSELSBrussels’ Christmas market was all lights and food and people and good smells! I popped into a store named “250 Beers” with staff who were having a great time. I bought a beer called “Hercule” just because it had a great Agatha Christie/Belgian name. The next day, I bought a really big Delirium Christmas Beer bottle. The guy used it for doing curls so he could show off his bicep. Ooh Aah.
Getting
here was fun, too. I had a really long layover in Oslo, so took the airport
train downtown. I climbed the roof of the Opera House and looked out over the
fjord across the sculpture of the sunken ship. Then I went inside and admired
the architecture. It has vertical wooden strips in huge spiral ramps to get into the
seats in the theater.
Next was a trip to a couple of microbreweries that were
named in an International Herald Tribune article. I took the tram. The
breweries looked very industrial and not open to the public. But the restaurant
on the street had Schou Christmas Beer on tap! It was delicious, with the pasta
of the day.
Back to Brussels. Sorry for the wandering thought processes, I was just getting excited for Belgian beer and chocolate!
Tom and Shirley came to get me on the 21st,
Saturday, and we wandered the Christmas market in the day time. We walked over
to the Parc de Bruxelles, where the City SkyLiner had just been erected.
Shirley stayed safely on the ground while Tom and I rode 70 meters up in the
rotating viewing doughnut. We could see for miles and miles and miles. Tom and
I forgot to bring the map, so we made up names for things that we were seeing.
We saw Thailand (the scaffolded Palace of Justice) and the Brandenburg Gate
(part of the EU quarter). We were above the King’s Palace and could see back to
the beautiful buildings around the Grand Place.
By then, the daylight was waning. We picked up my luggage
and took a train to the Landal resort, where we will spend Christmas week.
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