Yesterday (Thursday)we trekked to the Royal museum complex and Mont des Arts area. Where our neighborhood, Saint-Gilles, can be described as “vibrant bohemian”, the Royal museums quarter was filled with tourists and school groups. A whole different flavor of Brussels. I enjoyed rediscovering Magritte at the Magritte museum. I had forgotten his light-hearted and playful…
Magritte & the Old Masters
The goal of this morning’s trek was to get to the Magritte Musée by ten-thirty. That was the time on electronic the ticket I purchased in January that let us in to the Magritte museum and the Old Masters museum next door. Wait—did I say “ticket”? When we arrived at the building with the large green…
Moules-frites
Mussels with fried potatoes. A cornerstone of Belgian cuisine. This was today’s lunch. Mussels are a plentiful and cheap food, easily harvested along the coast of the North Sea. Although the prized catch comes from Schelde, a shallow river connecting western Belgium to the Netherlands and the North Sea, most mussels used in Belgium these…
Bonjour, Poirot!
Outside of inching across runways in Albuquerque and Chicago to experience lumbering jet choreography in the age of LAL (Living At Airports) where when the pilot announces to the stewards, “Prepare for landing,” it should be followed, once you land, with, “Please have patience while while we crawl. If you’re wondering whether you will make…
Long story short
Yesterday, once we’d made our way to our apartment and dropped the luggage off, we wandered our neighborhood in the dream state of arrival, ambled to the Ixelles Pond hangout, wandered into the venues for the Belgian Short Film festival, bypassed the French fry shack, loitered in a graphic novel book shop (Grubb can amuse…
Gridlock on the tarmac
It was like the 405 at rush hour. The taxiways at Chicago’s Ohare airport. We’d been delayed leaving Albuquerque, eating into our tight connection time in Chicago. Still, things were looking good until touch down at Ohare. As we barreled down onto the runway I noticed long lines of planes lining the taxiways. As soon…
Land of waffles and french fries
It’s been a year since we’ve traveled out of the country. Last year, Japan. Shinto, Buddhism, beauty, politeness. This time, Belgium. Population: Close to 12 million people, densely packed. Home of the famous waffle. Birthplace of French fries (yep, according to Belgians, it wasn’t France), headquarters of the European Union and NATO (Brussels), a constitutional…
What a journey
Many, many years ago (oh say 50 or so years), I traveled through Southeast Asia including some time Japan. So this was not my first foray into Asian territory. Ah, it was a different world back then. No internet for one thing. How did I do it without Google Maps? Starting our journey in rural…
You know it’s time to go home when…
You’re too old to have fun at the gathering. Joining the group watching the robot statue makes you feel ridiculous. The park you’re walking through is meagre in comparison to the previous parks. The open shipping lane to the ocean seems adventurous. Ella is tired of waiting for you to catch up. You come across…
Japanese-style Korean (or Korean-style Japanese?)
Dinner had us stumped. There wasn’t much out in the Odaiba area which was our last destination. We opted to start the journey back home. We had to take a train to Shiodome and then transfer to the Oeida subway. At Shiodome station, we decided to ask Google what was in the area for food….
Unicorn Gundam
After a visit to the Sumida Hakusai museum, we wanted to explore an area we hadn’t seen yet. Being Tokyo, there were hundreds of neighborhoods as yet unvisited so really, it could be anywhere. Grubb wanted to head to Odaiba, an area by the bay. We had no inkling that on a fine Sunday afternoon,…
Hokusai highlights
For our last day in Tokyo we had beautiful weather to go along with the beautiful woodblock prints that are part of the collection at the Sumida Hokusai Museum. On Friday I talked about the exhibit at the Tokyo National Museum that featured Tsutaya Jūzaburō, master printer of the Edo Era. The most famous artist that…
Map of the Day, last day in Japan
Hotel -> Sumida Hokusai Museum -> Unicorn Gundam -> Shiodome -> Hotel Stay tuned. More details to follow on how we spent today, sadly our last day in Japan. Tomorrow (Monday the 5th), we leave Tokyo’s Haneda Airport at 17:00 (5:00 pm) and land at LAX on Monday the 5th at 11:00am. Isn’t that clever?…
Sign of the times
A cafe in Kanazawa seemingly designated for Americans.
Chastity High
Throughout our visit to Japan we constantly come across groups of girls or boys dressed in secondary school uniforms. We never see the high school age kids mix genders as they walk too or from school. At first I thought, that’s a lot of private schools! Then I found out that, “While relationships are common in schools worldwide,…