Tag Archives: african museum

Monday 19th August 2013 – WE MADE IT …

AFRICAN MUSEUM MUSEE AFRICAIN TERVUREN BELGIUM… to the African Museum this evening. That’s situated a good 7 or so miles outside Brussels in the village of Tervuren.

We didn’t mean to be there – in fact we had only set out for a short walk but we decided to go via the clothing bank and dispose of a pile of clothing that no-one wanted. That meant fetching Caliburn and once we were all esconced inside him, well, we just set off and went for a little drive. There’s no point in Cécile and her mum being here if they aren’t going to be getting around a little.

We stopped off to admire the big elephant sculpture on the car park and then went for a walk around the grounds. As you might expect, the Museum itself was closed. Still, it was a very pleasant evening out, with the fine weather and all of that.

Apart from that, almost everything for sale has been put on the internet now and the cellar is empty apart from a wardrobe and two boxes of rubbish. Of course, we had everything all over the floor this afternoon going right through it and just as we were up to our ears in paperwork, the valuer came round, with the prospective purchaser, to value the property. Absolutely impeccable timing I don’t think.

Anyway, now the place is looking a little more like it and tomorrow we are planning to take the books down to the second hand book shop for sale. That will make even more space and from there it’s all (hopefully) downhill. I just hope that some more of this furniture goes.

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Saturday 17th August 2013 – ANCHORS AWAY!

cecile desmarest fabienne desmarest titanic pedalo etang mellaerts brussels Well, it was something like that anyway. Here we all are on the “Titanic”- a pedalo on the Etangs Mellaerts at Brussels.

We’ve had a full day out today (or, at least, an afternoon). We started off at the Carrefour down by Hermann Debroux where we did a huge load of shopping (I dunno where it all goes, this food). From there we went to the “Lunch Garden”, for the simple reason that they were advertising moules et frites and as we all know from our visit to the Ile D’Yeu earlier this year Cecile’s mother is rather partial to moules et frites.

cecile desmarest fabienne desmarest titanic pedalo etang mellaerts brusselsWe weren’t alone on the lake either. Loads of other boats and pedalos, newly-married couples, swans, ducks and all of that kind of thing too. In fact we only needed a whale and we would have had a whale of a time.

Conspicuous by his absence however was Strawberry Moose. He had heard Cecile and I discussing our proposed adventure and he was all up for it, of course? What made him change his mind however was that I told him that, no matter how it was pronounced, the objects for which we were going to be looking were spelt O-A-R-S. That rather put the kybosh on it from his point of view, I’m afraid.

old tram museum in operation etang mellaerts brusselsThe Etangs Mellaerts are only just down the road from the tram museum and there’s a tram line that goes out to the African Museum at Tervuren. Every so often they give one of the historic trams a run out along that line and, sure enough, an old-timer goes a-rattling and a-clanking past us.

So back home and the only disappointment was that we had another no-show this evening. The person who wants to buy the washing machine and who should have been here at 18:00 – he never turned up. I don’t know why people do this kind of thing.

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