Easter Friday

Nearly everybody slept in because they had come from work the day before. The morning's weather was still rainy anyway. In the late morning we all got into P's car and went to Leuven where we wandered the streets in the old city. Leuven is a university city, so students make it lively.

We had a nice lunch in a posh restaurant, where I shared a fish stew with C. Despite the unpromising skies, spring had arrived and the flowers were blooming.

Then a short drive to Brussels where we took in the usual sights, along with crowds of other tourists. First stop: 't Grand Place, the central square of Brussels.

The buildings here are elaborately decorated but still functional edifices.

Then to see the Manneken Pis (Pissing Boy) of course. He is actually much smaller than people think because the usual photos are close-ups. The people around it give you an idea of the scale. He has a female counterpart, a Jeanneke Pis, but she is a recent creation from 1987, not centuries old, and much less well known.

One museum that I wanted to visit was the Belgian Comic Strip Centre. Many people know of Tintin, but he is just one of hundreds of comic strips created by Belgian artists. Just why the Belgians are so prolific at this art could be the subject of an entire article, if not a book. The exhibition includes other artists from elsewhere in Europe. But you will find few US comic strips here. None that I recognised anyway.


It would take a whole day to appreciate it fully. We had arrived rather late so we only had a short visit and got thrown out at closing time.

The narrow streets in the old city are very glitzy tourist traps. Restaurant spruikers were all the time trying to entice passers-by into the establishments. We did however try some gaufres, sold by a street vendor. Mine was chocolate topped. Apparently that's inauthentic, it's only supposed to be dusted with confectioner's sugar. C went further, hers was topped with ice-cream.


On the way home we found a Carrefour hypermarket and bought supplies for dinner. We were joined by one of P's friends. There was so much food that we had leftovers for the next day.