… after a good lie-in (well, it IS Sunday!) and a leisurely breakfast, I drove round to Marianne’s for lunch, which was very nice of her to invite me.
It was heavily overcast today just by way of a change, but it was reasonably warm and so in the afternoon after lunch we went for a walk in the Bois de la Cambre down the road.
It’s been a couple of years at least since I have been for a good perambulation in the park and there have been some considerable changes here in that time. They seem to have been spending their money quite considerably.
But the most important change is over here.
The old pie hut on the island that burnt down a while ago has now been completely rebuild and is now a magnificent chalet – the Chateau Robinson – doubtless named for Robinson Crusoe.
Access out there is by a boat, which you can see mooed up to the quay just to the right of centre. It costs €1:00 to take the boat out there, and the return trip is free, which is just as well given the price of the coffee out there.
I would very much like to say that I took my coffee this afternoon with Price Laurent of the Belgians, and I bet that you are thinking that I’m joking too.
But far from it in fact.
Although he wasn’t acually sitting at my table, he was close enough – and he wasn’t surrounded by armed policemen and crowds of bodyguards either. Just out en famille for his Sunday afternoon cuppa.
Mind you, I bet that the two or three people at nearby tables who stood up discreetly to leave just as he was leaving “had some interest” in the matter.
Then Marianne came back with me to the flat, I dismantled the bed in Caliburn and Marianne helped me load the heavy stuff that was remaining.
We had a really long chat and what with it being Sunday we went out for pizza, seeing as how she had given me a useful hand. However we were sidetracked by a new restaurant advertising, would you believe, a Vegan section. And I had the most magnificent penne al arabiatta that I have ever eaten.
Dropping her off, I was back on the road. The plan was to head home as rapidly as I could and go as far as I could before stopping for the night somewhere, but I was rather side-tracked.
I’d noticed once or twice over the course of the years that the Rue de la Loi in Brussels looks magnificent at night with all of the street lights and vehicles that flood the street.
One of the things that I had wanted to do was to take a few photos of the place before I left. So off I went, and took about half a dozen. Here’s one of them to titivate your palette
Having done that, Caliburn and I bounced happily all the way to near Auxerre where I crashed out for the night at some silly time of the early morning.
And wasn’t that uncomfortable? It seems that Bane of Britain had forgotten that he’d left his sleeping bag and pillow back at the apartment.
GRRRRRRRR!
