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 lunch but boring old us, we had the same thing we had yesterday, Boulets à la Liégeoise, although at a different restaurant. Just because we liked it so much.
We wandered around exploring new streets and ended the day nipping into a chocolate shop for pralines for Grubb and a bakery for a slice of mousse cake for me: dessert we intended to take home and eat later.
Whenever anyone asked where we were from and we answered (truthfully) we got quizzical looks. When the chocolate shop guy asked (in very good English) the question and heard the answer, he also had a surprised look and said “we don’t get many people from foreign places visiting the city”. Well that explains the quizzical looks and shy smiles.
As we stepped out of the bakery, I could swear the temperature had dropped 20 degrees (F) in just a few short minutes and kaboom, we were caught in a hail storm. Brrrrrrrrr. We did have umbrellas but that doesn’t help much when hail is coming at you from the sides. All we could do was scurry to an overhang and wait it out with everyone else.
What’s that you ask? Oh, the important thing…yes the desserts made it back to the apartment in fine shape. Although they didn’t last long once we got in the door.
We got asked that a lot and also answered truthfully, but after saying US we quickly added New Mexico and then Albuquerque hoping Breaking Bad might trump Trump. Only one time was there confusion with Mexico and one time the guy said he had learned all the US states in school.
It has been interesting how in Liege the reaction is usually surprise – tourism isn’t much of a thing. In other places though, the reaction is more about politics.