The Flower Carpet & Back to School!

Every two years Brussels carpets the Grand Place in flowers.  We had to go see it because it was all everyone talked about..however we knew that it really is just something you need to take a quick peek at, its not something that takes hours!  So we snuck down on Sunday morning before all the crowds got there.

 A pretty shot of the town hall tower...

 One restaurant had a great view if you snuck up the stairs...

It was a Mexican theme, I'm not sure why?

A cool shot of the clouds..lots of good clouds around Brussels!  The heat is gone and it is much cooler now!

 Back to school!  Kelly-12, Katie-10, Charlie-3!

Charlie's first homework assignment was to send in a picture of him reading in his favorite place, this is where he picked, our living room recliner...with his favorite reading buddy! He does have a treat in his hand that you can't quite see, Louna was much more interested in that than the book!

Final summer visits and visitors!

Our friends Cory & Mary and their son Nate came to finish off our summer visitors.   Katie missed them entirely as she was in Norway visiting her best friend from school in Brussels who has returned to Norway.  She loved her time there and came home full of stories of eating moose meat tacos and lots of deer meat too.  (Her friend Astrid's father is a hunter)

Here they are by a Viking ship and on an old polar ship called the Fram.


A Norwegian sunset...

We are all sad to see Astrid return to Norway, we hope she will continue to visit us when she can!

Charlie traded Katie in for his big brother Nate.  I started back to work the week they were here so he pretty much spent his days with Nate and was delighted to not have to share him with anyone.  Kelly joined them when she could but she was trying to get her summer assignments done for school.

They loved climbing up onto the garage roof and hanging out in their spot.

One night we even delivered pizza up to them so they could eat a boys dinner on the roof!

Mary and her own Belgian chocolate namesake!

They are true history lovers and had a long list of places to see.  We spent Saturday heading for the WWI battlefields near Yper and went to several places we had not been before. 

We saw the cemetery at Tyne Cot, very beautiful memorial to all the Commonweath soldiers.  Kelly pointed out that the South African Regiment soldiers had the symbol of Nancy the Springbok.  I have a WWI medallion from a SA hat with the same image.

A very beautiful, sad place.

Louna continued to visit many places in Europe that dogs might not be allowed...she wasn't allowed in the American cemetery near Luxembourg, but here she was able to explore with us.

Our next stop was the Passchendaele Museum, which was another gorgeous place in an area that saw so many senseless deaths in WWI.  Here is a link to the museum website which will do a better job explaining all that is there.  It was very well done.  

https://www.passchendaele.be/en

In the dugout

Louna and I explored the rememberance garden while the rest of the crew saw the museum.  They had a garden for each country that sent soldiers to fight here.  What was interesting was the one to the US was mainly about the war effort to provide food aid to Belgium.  Here is the plaque..

Its always nice to see the good work that the US does around the world recognized!

Louna and I needed a little break from the sadness so we broke it up with a fun side trip to a bread vending machine in the tiny town...

I got a loaf of white and a loaf of brown..super cool!

Our next stop was the town of Yper only a few miles down the road.  Mary was able to sweet talk the lady into letting them into the museum for a speedy tour of the Flanders Field Museum before they closed....but she did have to beg!

Charlie lost his mind over the carnival outside the museum in the main square...he scoped out this game to play after dinner!

 We sped through our dinner so we could watch the "Last Post" nightly ceremony at the Menin Gate in Yper to remember the fallen soldiers.

With the buglers who play the Last Post

Mini replica of the Menin Gate, it is very large so hard to photograph it all

Had to take a picture of the O'Brien J soldier...not sure what the story behind the two names is? We just happened to be standing under this group of names during the ceremony.

A final photo to end this post...we saw this horse in a zebra blanket on our way to Yper in the morning, after all the South Africa days seeing real zebras in our neighborhood we all got a kick out of seeing this Belgian Zebra! 

We were very sorry to see our friends go, we had such a great time exploring with them and telling old stories. Mary really remembered some funny ones about Kelly especially how she used to love playing Candyland. Thankfully she has given that up!

Nate and Charlie had us all playing nightly games of Knockout on our basketball hoop, sadly I never took a picture as I was too busy trying to win...but we have kept up Nate's tradition and have had some great family knockout games since they have left.  We hope they will return again so we can have some rematches!  

Looking for the Sexy Ghost

We wanted to catch up with our friends that live in the Netherlands and they offered a few options for a Saturday trip.  One was this castle ruin that was having a festival.  When I went to the website Greg asked about  why it had a sexy ghost.  Here is a photo of the ghost!

There is a legend about the ghost on the website and if we had stayed until 10pm we could have seen some sort of ghost walking the walls. 

Here is the story of the ghost...we still aren't sure of the drawing...

The Ghost of Berthe de La Roche

Certain evenings, around nightfall, Countess Berthe de La Roche can be seen wandering on the castle ruins, at the very spot where she died.

But just who is Berthe ?

A Lord of La Roche, having only a daughter, Berthe, as sole heir to his powerful inheritance, staged a grand tournament at his castle. The hand of the wealthy heiress would go to the Knight who could beat all comers in a fair fight.

The first Knight to come forward was the Count of Montaigu, a huge man, proud of his strength, who had never been unhorsed by an adversary's lance. 

So of course no other champions came forward.

Yet Count de Montaigu had already plighted his troth to Countess Alix de Salm.

Just as time was about to run out, a knight entered the courtyard. What an odd contender! He was small, almost a child, and at the sight of this puny champion, the Count de Montaigu was seized by a terrible fit of laughter.

Watched by the Knights and the Ladies, the unequal combat began.

With a terrible thundering from his battle steed's hooves, Count de Montaigu galloped towards his feeble adversary, armed only with a light weapon, his horse armour-less. With marvellous dexterity, guided by an alert hand, in a single bound this nimble steed avoided the Count's violent collision.

In an instant, the Count turned around and came back at a walk, slower and more methodically this time, bearing down on his deft rival. But try as he might, he missed him every time. He started to get terribly hot, and the little Knight reined back his steed, stopped, and stood waiting provocatively.

Taking advantage of the moment, the Count sped up. The huge man's sword swung through the air, and like a steel lightning-bolt, whistled down upon the reckless youngster...

But already the little Knight was no longer there. The heavy Count, carried away by his inertia, lost his balance and was unhorsed. With a crash of breaking steel, he fell to the ground. The little knight inserted the fine blade of his light sword through the join in his helmet and slit the fearsome Count's throat with a single blow.

Moments later, the happy father led the newly-weds to the nuptial chamber right at the top of the keep.

First thing next morning, the father stood waiting in the castle yard, impatient to witness and share the happiness of the young newlyweds. The sun climbed higher and higher, but still they failed to appear. Tired of this long wait in vain, he climbed the steps of the keep, ran to the nuptial chamber, and knocked at the door. No answer… Unable to suppress his paternal anxiety, the father pushed the door; it opened, but the chamber was empty and the window open. With one bound, the panicking father rushed over to it, peering down into the void in terror: at the bottom of the abyss, on the rocks on the banks of the Ourthe, lay two dots - one black, the other white.

The mysterious Knight was none other than Countess Alix de Salm, who had made a pact with the Devil, then disguised herself to take her vengeance on Count de Montaigu and the beautiful Berthe de La Roche...

We didn't stay to see the ghost... we were MELTING because it was so hot that day.  So the kids tried some archery and we headed for a dam nearby that had swimming in the hopes of cooling down.

 Cooling off thank goodness!!!

 We were low on gas and in a pretty remote area so our awesome friends followed us to the nearest town of Bastogne.  We happily made it on fumes and spent a few minutes checking out the tank in the main square and planning a repeat visit!

 

Liked how this place was called "Nuts" after the famous response to the Germans when they asked for surrender!

 One final remark...when its hot here in Europe...there is NO AC to escape to...anywhere..you just melt and wait and hope for the heat to go away.  Restaurants aren't air conditioned, most shops aren't, homes aren't...so when you see the weather report and they talk about a heat wave here it means miserable people!  Keep that in mind when you buy your airplane tickets!!

South African Friends and Our first visitor from Wakefield, MA!

Kelly was back from her trip to the Coast Guard Academy to attend AIM.  She then did a two week internship at BP.  Her friend from school also had an internship near her and the first day they came home together, I loved that they were almost in identical dresses!



Our friends from our South Africa days were in Europe so they came through Brussels.  Charlie was happy to have a friend his exact age.  Our friends now stay in Costa Rica so it was fun to hear about their new life by the beach.  Together we visited the Royal Palace fun to see it again!

 Banquet table all set for a feast!

Charlie and his pals, love the chandeliers!

This was in the mirror room that later had the green beetle ceiling added!

Outside the palace!

 

Charlie finally got to go paddle boating at the place down the street from us, he has been begging all summer!

 
Our little visiting princess even convinced Kelly to turn back into a princess for a quick show! Very entertaining!

Kelly & Greg headed for Dunkirk one afternoon...the rest of us sat it out...

Airport farewell-Katie went off to France to stay with a family in Bordeaux, many years ago we hosted their daughter Amelie in Boston. 

Katie raved about her seafood dinner!

We loved hearing about Katie's trip and all the wonderful food she tried in Bordeaux and all about where she visited. She worked on her French a bit too!  We hope that one day we can all go visit them too!

We had very exciting visitors come for dinner, Kelly's Galvin Middle School French teacher, Rosanne Bakos, and her husband Bill.  They had been in Europe and delighted us with a visit to see our house and hear about our adventures.  Kelly didn't stop smiling the entire night!  We also realized that they were our first visitors from Wakefield and we loved getting the updates on some of our old friends from town.

A very appropriate picture of a inspirational French teacher and a former student!

We continue to amaze our visitors with how cool Brussels is and we are so lucky to have so many people come our direction!!