… that tomorrow morning I’m going to be regretting today!
According to the Fitbit I’ve done … errr … 230% of my day’s activity and walked all of … errr … 17.4 kilometres.
Funnily enough, apart from the aches in the back of my legs (mainly from the cramp attack yesterday) I wasn’t any more tired than I might have been on occasions when I used to walk these kinds of distance on a regular basis.
What this actually means, I really don’t know but I’ll find out tomorrow afternoon at the hospital I suppose.
Despite the early night there was some kind of interruption in the building last night. I’m not sure what it was, but I ended up having to close the window into the communal airspace to keep the noise out.
06:20 when I awoke but badger that for a game of cowboys on a Sunday. I turned over for a short while – 08:20 was much more like it.
After breakfast I had a shower, washed my undies and prettied myself up ready for Alison. And while I was waiting for her I was accosted by some young African girl asking me if I were “Luke”. I explained that I was waiting for someone else but if she didn’t turn up and Luke didn’t turn up, we’d go off together.
She had quite a laugh at that which was good. It pays to be light-hearted, I reckon. And she was quite pretty too.
Ohhh yes – I can still chase after the women – even if I can’t remember why!
We’d arranged to meet at the viewpoint by the side of the Palais de Justice where there are some stunning views over the city.
Of course I had brought the camera with me to take some good photos but unfortunately the weather didn’t want to co-operate.
It wasn’t raining, which was quite lucky, but a horrible clammy, misty morning. and that put paid to the photography session.
We took the lift down into the Marolles and went for a prowl around the flea market. It’s been probably 15 years since I last went and there’s nothing like as much stuff – or as many customers – as there used to be.
And the prices – the days when you could find some absolute bargains seem to be long-gone. For one or two things, I had to go for a lie-down in a darkened room.
Mind you, Alison did find some marvellous coffee tables, and one of them disappeared into the back of her car. And had I had Caliburn with me, a second one would have disappeared too.
Something like a semi-globe with an olde-worlde wooden top cut in half and hinged so that you could use the inside of the globe as a storage space. How I would have loved one for my place!
We had a couple of coffees and went for a good walk around, passing once more by the viewpoint at the Palais de Justice.
By now the mist was starting to lift and the weather was looking better. To such an extent that Alison was obliged to divest herself of her jacket.
And I could take a couple of photos from up here too.
On her way home Alison dropped me off in Ixelles.
I went for a bag of chips at the fritkot and then down to the cemetery to pay my respects to Marianne.
But before I reached her plot I stumbled across this tombstone which I must never have seen before.
You need to be a French-speaker to understand why someone with a small mind like mine would find this rather amusing.
But Marianne’s grave is a little overgrown these days – it looks as if her other visitors have stopped coming. Next time that I pass by I’ll have to bring some gardening tools with me and do some tidying up.
From here, I decided to be brave and to see how far I could make it back to my hotel on foot.
And my route took me down the Avenue Buyl where they are once again modernising the tram layout at the junction with the Boulevard General Jacques.
I’ve no idea why they would be doing all of this work though – it was only a couple of years ago that they totally reorganised this junction so they can’t have worn it out already.
My walk continued down the hill and round the corner to the Abbaye de la Cambre.
regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve been here a few times in the past and somewhere around I have a few photos that I’ve taken of it.
But I’ve not taken a photo of it from this angle before so I need to put this right.
There were hordes of people loitering around sunning themselves on the lawn this afternoon because by now the weather was quite nice
And this gave me an opportunity to go for a good wander around at the abbey and look for some spots that might come out really well on camera.
I hadn’t realised just how little I had actually seen of the abbey in the past.
My walk then took me along the side of the “etangs d’Ixelles” – the Ixelles lakes that were formerly park of the River Maelbeek.
This runs through the city from south-west to north-east but was filled in centuries ago. But it’s all very unstable and buildings along its course have been known to teeter and totter.
I lived in one once with Laurence and Roxanne and you could see the cracks appearing.
If you look on any good map of Brussels you can see the course of the river. There is plenty of parkland along its route and occasionally there are lakes.
in Jette, where I lived for many years, there was a huge parkland with all of the lakes that was very pleasant to walk around
In fact I often mused that 500 years ago I could have gone to see Marianne by canoe rather than by bus.
One thing that “foreigners” often say about Belgium is that the Belgians have a weird sense of humour.
My natural response is that the way things are in Belgium you need to have a weird sense of humour to live here, but when you see what the city fathers have done, you can understand why foreigners have this opinion.
It’s not every country where you would deliberately set out to build a set of ruins to liven up your city architecture.
Alison and I had noticed up by the Palais de Justice how they had set up a temporary pie hut and a pile of deckchairs for people to take the sun.
That’s clearly not an isolated incident because here at the Place Flagey we had a similar set-up. And by now we had a really good sun too.
It was turning out to be a nice day after all.
The casual strollers weren’t the only people to take advantage of the deckchairs either.
I hadn’t been there more than two minutes when an impromptu jazz band appeared and started to entertain the crowd.
They weren’t particularly up to much and the drummer was pretty dire but I’m all in favour of live music and I quite enjoyed it for what it was.
It gave me an opportunity to study the architecture too.
I used to have an apartment out on the Boulevard Reyers right next to the champignon – the mushroom-shaped tower that is the headquarters of one of the Belgian broadcasting companies.
Before they moved out there, they were based in this beautifu art-deco building in the Place Flagey. When I came to live here in 1992 the building was derelict and in a very sorry state.
It’s now been restored and they’ve done quite a good job of it. Plenty of trendy cafés on the ground floor and offices above.
Carrying on with my long walk I climbed up to the Avenue Louise – the posh bit of the city and walked all the way down the street towards the city centre.
I ended up back at the viewpoint at the Palais de Justice and by now the weather had cleared sufficiently for me to admire the voew and to try out the telephoto lens.
Of course, you don’t need me to tell you what this load of balls might be, because if anything is symbolic of the city, it has to be the Atomium.
And it does look so much better since they have cleaned it up. At one tile it was looking quite shabby.
That tower there in centre-shot is the tower of the Town Hall of the commune of Molenbeek.
But never mind that for a moment. If you look to the left of it, there on the skyline you’ll see a large block of flats.
it is in fact four large blocks of flats superimposed one in front of another and it’s in one of those where I lived for a very happy 11 years – the legendary “avenue de l’Exposition”
And now, we can’t have a good stroll around the city without bringing some controversy into it, can we?
This is the Mont de Pieté – the Roman Catholic religious charity in the rue St Ghislain that is charged with making loans to less-fortunate members of society who find themselves temporarily financially-embarrassed.
And on the wall is a plaque listing the names of the inhabitants of the local area who were victims of the Nazis in World War II.
As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed …it’s all very well these people who criticise the civilians of the occupied countries for what is perceived to be a lack of resolution against the invaders, but they didn’t ever run this kind of risk.
But wait a minute! What’s this?
Not 50 yards away from the plaque on the wall of the Mont de Pieté are these four plaques embedded into the pavement.
These people are also victims of the “barbarie Nazie” but their names don’t appear on the plaque of the victims who lived in the area.
And not 50 yards the other side are some more plaques set in the pavement of yet more victims, and their names don’t appear on the plaque either.
But a brief examination of the family names and of their ultimate destiny tells you all that you need to know as to why they don’t appear on the plaque.
The Catholic Church isn’t interested in anyone whose religious beliefs don’t equate to theirs and certainly isn’t interested in “sharing the suffering of the afflicted” – and that’s what I call a disgrace.
I made it back to my hotel without once stepping on public transport, and found that i’d run out of water. So that meant a trip to the supermarket in the Gare du Midi.
And later on, I went out for what was probably the worst ever vegan burger that I have ever eaten and I won’t be going there again.
But with it being a really beautiful evening by now, I went for a walk along the boulevard to watch the funfair and to try a little “cut and paste” of images taken in the dark.
This image is well-cropped from the original and the results compare favourably with what the old Nikon D5000
would have produced under similar circumstances.
All in all, I’m not too disappointed
But if you want to see what the camera can do with its video facility, here’s a little film.
Again, this is edited down quite considerably from the original (as, in fact, are all of the photos that I take) and once again, I’ve had much worse results from this with other cameras
All-in-all, I’m quite satisfied with this camera.
So that was my day out then. 2002 words, 17.4 kilometres and the exciting thing about it was that I didn’t crash out either. It clearly did me some good although I’m now walking like John Wayne after a week on his horse.
I’ll regret this tomorrow!
