It is hard to find the time to post! Here we are, already, on the Rhine River, after a wonderful week in Belgium with our old friend Frédérique and her boyfriend Roland. They were a wonderful help in our efforts to follow Byron on the first part of his 1816 travels, and it was also a pleasure to be their guests and enjoy their generous hospitality. We stayed with them in the same home as on our first visit in 1999. We visited Waterloo, Bruges, Antwerp, Mechlen, Brussels, and Louvain (every town has both a French name and a Flemish one, confusing to our brains). The battlefield and surrounding countryside of Waterloo occupied a whole day. Then the Brussels Art Museum - to see Breugel's "The Fall of Icarus" specifically, and EU headquarters buildings to think about the modern efforts to unite Europe. We stopped in several churches - including a surprise organ recital in the Antwerp Cathedral, and strolled through pedestrian districts of beautiful old town centers - it's a small country full of so much history, both tragic and hopeful. Do you know what a Beguinage is? We do now because we walked through two.
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| Lloyd and friends in the Louvain Beguinage |
