Tomorrow (Sunday) we head back to Brussels. We will have one full day in Brussels on Monday and then we fly home on Tuesday.Grubb has covered a lot of what we did today in Liege. I have just a few photos to add. Above: Statue in Parc de la Boverie Above: Sculpture by the river
Beating the Beer Lovers Marathon to the Parc
Rain wasn’t forecast until early in the evening so it was a perfect day to do a river walk. Okay, it wasn’t exactly warm, but that meant I wasn’t going to slow Ella down with my musing along the Meuse. We were going in the direction of Parc Boverie. This island park was the site…
Weirdness at the Wittert
We walked down into the downtown of Liége this morning from our apartment. Since it was a Saturday, the streets were practically empty. Ella stopped in at St. Paul’s Cathedral to check on a recent art exhibition and then we stopped for Belgian waffles Liége-style. They had a surgery density that the other Belgian waffle…
Migration in Belgium
Yesterday, we ducked into a bar called Sarajevo for Grubb’s much needed cappuccino. I noticed the young guy behind the bar was not a native French speaker and to my untrained ear, I thought it could be Turkish or perhaps Croatian. When I asked where he was originally from (crossing my fingers I wasn’t making an…
Liege style waffles
Late in the morning, after a walk into Liege and a gander at the University art museum, we stopped in at a cafe for a cappuccino and decided to try the Liege style waffle. Think of it as a pastry. Liege waffles are made from a brioche type dough rather than a liquid batter. They…
Lost Enlightenment
Yesterday inside the Curtius Museum I was contemplating a dark painting of the Christ child reaching for an apple Mary was holding when I got a text from Ella who was ahead of me in the museum. She said she was in the section of the Curtius covering the Enlightenment. “Just go down the stairs.”…
What you didn’t know you wanted to know
All this talk of Flanders, Wallonia, Flemish. I think I’m beginning to get it. The closest Belgium has to what we think of as states or provinces is these three regions. Flanders (Flemish-Dutch speaking), Wallonia (French speaking) and Brussels (bilingual Dutch and French). Belgium also has three official language “communities”. French which is primarily in…
A mouthful for Saint Bernard
After recovering from the Curtius Museum’s brief mention in very tiny letters that the ancestors who settled in the Liége region were the victims of Roman genocide, I lingered looking at Merovingian oddments and Carolingian carvings. When it came to wood, those altar adorning Northern Europeans knew a thing or two. And they banged out…
A close shave
The Curtius Museum in Liège explores the city archaeologically and culturally from its Roman settlement to the Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo. At each significant period, representative objects are exhibited. Roman litter fills an entire floor of display cases. One metal instrument I found freakishly fascinating. We all know that the Romans loved their baths. Not…
Neither rain nor hail will keep us from our quest
Today’s explorations of Liege included scouting out the statue of George Simenon, creator of Inspector Maigret and a visit to the Grand Curtius which held 8,000 years of history plus an exhibit of Japonism (glass vases in the style of Japanese). Who doesn’t love a beautiful, hand painted glass vase? We also had a late…
Sitting down with Georges
The prolific writer of detective fiction, Georges Simenon, said in his autobiographical novel “Pedigree” that his books were shaped by his childhood in Liège. Even when his stories (190 detective novels and 150 other novels) are set elsewhere they’re deeply rooted in its neighborhoods and atmosphere. We found Georges sitting on a bench a block…
70,000 nails can’t be wrong
L’Arbre à Clous (The Nail Tree) is a surviving folk tradition in the Liége region. Going back to ancient tree worship (I confess to a Shinto leaning in that direction), Wallonians believed ailments could be transferred out of the body and into a tree by means of a nail. The idea was that the tree absorbed…
Le Petit Avion
Two traditional Liege folk characters, Tchantchès and Nanesse, pilot the plane called Le Petit Avion. The pilots are sculpted as portrayed by the Belgian comic artist François Walthéry. Tchantchès is cheeky, irreverent “everyman” who represents the spirit of the city. He’s traditionally a puppet character and there’s even a puppet museum dedicated to him in…
A modern touch in St. Paul’s
I mentioned we stepped into St. Paul’s Cathedral and Grubb has written a post on the hidden statue of Lucifer. I was more taken with the cloister, which was entered through a massive wooden door and might easily be missed if weren’t standing ajar with a view down the beautiful Gothic ogival arched hallway. In…
Ascension and descension
Yesterday was Ascension Day in Belgium. We acknowledged it in our secular way by descending from our hilltop panoramic view into the city center. Getting off the bus, we walked by a couple of beer drinkers yelling at each other. One threw his brew into the face of his disputant and kicked at him as…