Sunday in Antwerp
Apr. 25th, 2006 11:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lizwilliamsOn Sunday, we did very little.
Art galleries visited: 1. Quite a lot of modern art, and also some classic Flemish works (Breughel etc). Since a bunch of my ancestors came from Flanders (over with William of Orange, apparently), this was interesting: I remember poring over those dense, dark little winter scenes in some of my mother's books when I was a child.
And then there is Hieronymus. More later on that.
Cafes visited: several. Antwerp is an excellent place to eat, and for dinner we found a very good Provencale restaurant, a tiny place, with a muddle of foliage, candles, steep precipitate stairs, and a chef whose kitchen was on full display. She told me that she was Belgian, but her grandparents had moved to the south of France after the war and she had learned to cook down there. Sardines for me, tuna for T, both great.
We also found - not a sex shop, not a sweet shop, but both. Sweets and candy in the forms of - well, you've all got an imagination. This provoked a new ambition for the centrepiece of our Beltane shop display: a giant chocolate dick. What could possibly be more appropriate? If the Council objected, I could claim religious persecution. However, when we went back to choose one, the shop was shut. Bah.
I also achieved another ambition: the purchase of a Hieronymous Bosch action figure.
After that, we visited various bars and rose at a reasonable hour on Monday to have a last look round and catch the train to the airport. En route, coming into northern Brussels, we passed a series of store fronts with a number of unclad young woman in various poses. Clearly they had forgotten to dress before doing the housework and were all sitting down for a rest. Happens to me all the time. I tend to associate this more with A'dam but T informs me that Schaerbeek is known for it. How does he know? Hmmm.
Part of the pleasure of visiting this part of Europe with T is not just that he knows the region, but that he speaks passable Dutch. Like most northern Europeans, the Belgians speak better English than I do, but it's still polite (my Antwerp business associate remarked to me in rather shamefaced tones that her kids were slacking at school and only spoke 3 languages, besides the two they conversed in at home. British person shuffles feet).
The flight home was extremely smooth and we got in about 4, to spend an evening gardening.
Art galleries visited: 1. Quite a lot of modern art, and also some classic Flemish works (Breughel etc). Since a bunch of my ancestors came from Flanders (over with William of Orange, apparently), this was interesting: I remember poring over those dense, dark little winter scenes in some of my mother's books when I was a child.
And then there is Hieronymus. More later on that.
Cafes visited: several. Antwerp is an excellent place to eat, and for dinner we found a very good Provencale restaurant, a tiny place, with a muddle of foliage, candles, steep precipitate stairs, and a chef whose kitchen was on full display. She told me that she was Belgian, but her grandparents had moved to the south of France after the war and she had learned to cook down there. Sardines for me, tuna for T, both great.
We also found - not a sex shop, not a sweet shop, but both. Sweets and candy in the forms of - well, you've all got an imagination. This provoked a new ambition for the centrepiece of our Beltane shop display: a giant chocolate dick. What could possibly be more appropriate? If the Council objected, I could claim religious persecution. However, when we went back to choose one, the shop was shut. Bah.
I also achieved another ambition: the purchase of a Hieronymous Bosch action figure.
After that, we visited various bars and rose at a reasonable hour on Monday to have a last look round and catch the train to the airport. En route, coming into northern Brussels, we passed a series of store fronts with a number of unclad young woman in various poses. Clearly they had forgotten to dress before doing the housework and were all sitting down for a rest. Happens to me all the time. I tend to associate this more with A'dam but T informs me that Schaerbeek is known for it. How does he know? Hmmm.
Part of the pleasure of visiting this part of Europe with T is not just that he knows the region, but that he speaks passable Dutch. Like most northern Europeans, the Belgians speak better English than I do, but it's still polite (my Antwerp business associate remarked to me in rather shamefaced tones that her kids were slacking at school and only spoke 3 languages, besides the two they conversed in at home. British person shuffles feet).
The flight home was extremely smooth and we got in about 4, to spend an evening gardening.
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no subject
Date: 2006-04-25 03:46 am (UTC)That demands a picture please!
no subject
Date: 2006-04-25 04:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-25 05:47 am (UTC)I also achieved another ambition: the purchase of a Hieronymous Bosch action figure.
Is this a figure of Bosch himself, or of an inmate from his paintings?
no subject
Date: 2006-04-25 06:25 am (UTC)He has a hook, which never bodes well, IMO.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-25 08:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-25 09:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-01 04:24 am (UTC)This one? Nice. Actually, they are all very covetable...
...a series of store fronts with a number of unclad young woman in various poses.
We were impressed to see that in Charleroi: but only in the evening.