… Epichalls do you see in this photograph?

The lift here in the hotel is lined with mirrors and you can make some quite interesting images using all of the reflections if you feel like it. I mean, I’m always feeling like it and so I went to take a photo as I was going out for a walk.

I went out early for a loaf of bread. There is a boulanger in the vicinity but as you might expect, it’s closed for the holidays. But the Spar supermarket in the town centre is open and I could buy a baguette in there.

I’d had a really good night’s sleep last night. I had to leave the bed just once and how I wished that I didn’t have to leave it at all. I’d had some exciting travels too but just like all the time recently, everything disappeared as soon as the alarm went off.

I had a lie-in too. The alarm was set for 07:00 and a repeat at 07:15 as usual, but I set the snooze function for an extra 10 minutes. I was still first downstairs for breakfast too, and excellent it was yet again.

I said that I was out for a walk this morning, but it wasn’t a walk that I had, but some exercise. Get it out of the way early. A brief 50-yard dash down the promenade after my cap which had blown off in the gale-force winds. It was wicked out there today.

You can probably tell that, not only from the waves out there but also for the lack of people on the promenade. It was deserted this morning.

The sun came out while I was out there in the wind, and so I ended up going for a walk on the beach. Hardly a soul about as you can see, but there was something exciting going on out there offshore.

I’ve no idea what it was, but there was an orange rescue launch out there together with some kind of tug or similar boat that was spraying water everywhere. Maybe it was some kind of fire-fighting exercise, I dunno. But the camera on the phone is no good for this kind of thing in this kind of weather.

I carried on along the beach which was deserted despite the sunshine. The kiosks were locked up, as you might expect.

But just there further down on the left are the Royal Galleries. They were built at the turn of the 20th Century on the orders of King Leopold II during the Golden Years of the Belgian state and was intended to be part of a royal palace. Nowadays though, the complex is a luxury hotel, a room in which is well out of the pocket of people such as you and me.

Ther’s also the huge skyscraper block of apartments down there, and how I would love to have a studio right at the top of it.

I’ve had a busy, and successful day on the website today. And now, there are five extra pages loaded, one, two, three, four and five, all about the final 40 kilometres of Highway 138 on the border between the Province of Quebec and the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It was quite an amount of work.

It’s a fairly controversial stretch of road, but nothing like as controversial as the 300 or so kilometres that the Quebec Government hasn’t built. You need to read what I’ve written to find out what is going on. It’s certainly a rather sad story.

I went back out later in the late afternoon for a coffee. Braving the howling gales and driving rain. It was definitely wicked out there this evening.

And to finish off the day, it’s Sunday so it’s pizza night. I found a tiny backstreet pizza place and I had a few slices of vegan cheese left. The pizza was delicious but once again, no-one in Belgium knows how to make a proper pizza base.

So now it’s early-night time. Only three more sleeps here and then it’s back to Leuven. And who knows where I’ll be after that.