An early Spring gone awry

For a few weeks at the end of February we had an early Spring. Everything started to bloom and we were excited since Winter tends to be very long here in Belgium. But March has been quite gloomy so on Easter we all put forth very positive thoughts to have the rain stop. Be careful what you ask for so instead of sun we got...

So here we are on Easter Monday (yes we have Easter Sunday and Easter Monday) basking in an inch or so of snow, realizing that we should have specifically "requested" SUN instead of a lack of rain. Ginger is thrilled, and I suppose that's what matters!

Lions and Tigers and Bears...oh my!

Whenever we walk in the forest near our house, we never know what we might see. But even this sight confounded us...including Ginger.

From a distance we thought it was a VERY large dog but as the "family" approached we realized that this was a different sort of animal being "walked".

Ginger didn't know what to think. She cowered, barked, chased and ran away from this sweet creature. They had a leash for him. He periodically jumps up on his owners, just like a dog. He also "mouths" his male human, which explains the thick leather gloves that he wears. He said something like "watch your hands" in rapid fire French when I asked in my halting French if he was friendly.

Now we feel like we've seen everything!

Barcelona- Sun in the Winter!

To escape the Winter grey of Belgium, we spent a few days in Barcelona in January. The next few blog entries attempt to capture our experience.

Barcelona is Spain's second largest city and the capital of the proud and distinct region of Catalunya. The city is vibrant, relaxed, sophisticated, and a little gritty...all at once. The popular nationalistic refrain is "You're not in Spain, you're in Catalunya!" It has its own language, history, and culture. So Spanish isn't of much use there. Here is a shot of Howard on the roof of our hotel with a beautiful view!


Drinking Spanish beer from a Belgian beer glass- Classic!
Breakfast is at 9am, lunch is 12-2pm (when everything but restaurants close), siesta is 2-5pm, dinner starts at 9pm. So this is hard to get used to for we Americans. But the good news is that the Tapas (small plates) bars are open all the time. That makes it easy to step in and get a quick bite to eat. The downside is that nothing they have looks remotely familiar. Here are a couple shots of places we went to.

Parc Guell... more Gaudi in Barcelona

We took a cab one of our days to Parc Guell, which is situated up on a hill above Barcelona. Gaudi designed this Parc to actually be a 30-acre garden and 60 residence housing development. It flopped but as a park it is a delight. Here you can see the view from the park, looking down onto Barcelona and then the ocean.

And here is the entrance to the park.

With more Gaudi style buildings.


And layers of walk ways and balconies.

Here was a guy in one of the caverns under the walk ways. He sounded beautiful in the rock surounds but with a get up like that, we weren't actually sure about him...

Gaudi furniture in the museum in the park.

Beautiful not doesn't look particularly comfortable, heh?

Sagrada Familia Church- A work in progress...Barcelona

Gaudi (the famous architect), designed and worked on this church from 1883-1926. It was no where near completed when he died and construction continues to this day. But even today, it is not expected to be completed for another 50 years. One reason for this is that the building is funded exclusively by private donations and entry fees. Local craftsmen often cap off their careers by spending a couple of years on this exciting contruction site. Here is a picture from a distance with the cranes overhead.

And a close up from the front. It takes one's breath away in a kind of "what in the world?" sort of way. I wouldn't call it beautiful but the fact that it keeps growing, even though Gaudi is dead, is fasinating. Especially since the community is working together to keep it up. So it is a bit of a social experiment.

Inside looking up at the ceiling. It felt like we were inside a large animal.

The backside of the church.

And again from a distance.

Barcelona- the Architecture

Barcelona is really about sun, food and the architecture. Antoni Gaudi was an architect who took Art Nouveau to the next level by forcing hard steel and concrete into soft, organic forms. As you walk around the city you see lots of examples of it. Here are some pictures of the Gaudi style plus some other interesting things we saw along the way.





We just liked this building for the decorations.

Barcelona- The Ramblas

The Ramblas is a main street that runs through Barcelona all the way down to the waterfront. The center of the street is just for pedestrians. It is a combination of very touristy, pretty gritty and full of interesting sights. One walk was enough for us but we are glad we didn't miss it. Each stretch has certain things for sale. One has birds, one has produce and here is the stretch with flowers.

There are the typical people dressed in strange get ups, as in any touristy area of any city. We laughed at this sight!

Howard had to pay for this shot!

The produce market was like the horn of plenty. Full of textures, colors and wonderful smells- Beautiful!








And then we came to the waterfront an a statue of Christopher Columbus pointing towards...we do not know.

There were a series of these floating statues in the harbor that Howard was enthralled with for reasons that couldn't be explained.

Surviving the Winter Months in Belgium

We didn't have much snow this year at all but during the holidays, the temperature was down in the 20's for weeks. It became very foggy one day and the next morning when we woke up everything was covered with a very think layer of frost AND it was sunny. Wow, it was really beautiful! This was taken down the street from us.

The Belgian Winter days are very short, the nights are very long and sometimes it seems that we NEVER see the sun. But to help us survive this season this year, we were honored to be invited to our neighbor's Christmas Eve dinner (also known as Le Reveillon de Noel). This might not seem like an amazing thing to an American living in the USA but for an American living in Belgium, it is absolutely amazing. The Belgians are very private people and we Americans are rarely included in such a personal situation. Here are a few pictures.

Howard with the twins. The one on the right was one of the hosts. They are both real teasers and had Howard going the entire night, playing tricks on him and teasing him in both French and in English!

Kathy and their son.

Dinner! Yum! At the beginning of the evening 70% of the people were speaking in English to us but by the end, after lots of wine, it was mostly French. At that point we sat back and just let it wash over us. It was a lovely, soulful evening. We even had a gift exchange! Below is Mike with his present- He is obviously an avid sailor!