Sumer is icumen in: Spring in Brussels

Last weekend, the 25th of April, we went to visit a forest just outside Brussels which is either very famous or completely obscure, depending on who you ask. It's called the Hallerbos/Bois de Halle, and is particularly known for the beautiful bluebells that bloom for a few weeks in spring. The flowering season is probably almost over - if you're interested in visiting this year or next, you can visit the forest's very informative website, which gives daily updates on whether the bluebells are (still) blooming. It explains that they will only bloom as long as sunlight can still reach them through the forest canopy, so once the beach trees have all their leaves, they will die off. I'm not sure why so many grow in this particular forest, I suppose it's just one of the lovely things nature does.

We spent about an hour walking around in the forest, and it felt like about half that amount of time. It really was enchanting, and I'm not sure the photos do it justice. I hadn't been expecting, in particular, the dense drifts of red leaves that were also covering the forest floor - they made for a lovely contrast with the rivers and pools of bluebells lying under the trees. We went there on a drizzly Saturday, which turned out to be a good choice, as the forest protected us from the rain but there weren't very many other people there. There's a carpark right there and it's all easily walkable for the average person.

We're having a nature overdose this spring, as this weekend we decided to visit the Royal Greenhouses at Laeken, on the 1st of May. The greenhouses are only open for a few weeks a year, as they are actually "royal" in the sense of being in the grounds of the royal palace. Cue much dark muttering from me as we went round about the unearned wealth and privilege of this family who live off taxpayers' money and ill-gotten Congo gains and then expect us all to doff our caps at them when they have the grace to let the great unwashed into their private domain once a year. My parents will be laughing at that, since I used to be quite the fan of the royals when I was a little girl, but as it says in the Bible, "When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child..."

Anyway, I had heard from colleagues and the internet that it can get horrifically crowded in there and to expect long lines, so we decided to go for the evening session, when hopefully it would be a bit quieter, and turned up half an hour before it opened - by which time a pretty long line had already formed. Luckily the evening wasn't too cold or rainy, and it actually turned out to be not as much of a nightmare as I had feared. It was good that we got there while it was still light, as it was worth it in order to see and photograph the grounds before going into the greenhouses. Once you're in, you do have to process around the exact same route (and at pretty much the same speed) as everyone else, so I can imagine it getting quite unpleasant on a hot and crowded day. Everyone seemed pretty content to take their time (and plenty of photos) though, so I never really felt like I was trapped behind a slow moving crowd, which is something I really hate.

Looking back at the rest of the queue after we got in

Jules joked that this boar was saying "paint me like one of your French girls"

In front of the palace (you're not allowed any closer)

An empty greenhouse

Selfie in front of the Japanese garden

This crown-topped greenhouse with its towers reminded me of a mosque or the Hagia Sophia

If you're ever in Brussels in spring, it's worth a look, not least for the fact that it's the only time of year you can visit - but be prepared to queue! The queue to get in evaporated fairly quickly I think, but as I said, it's worth making it in while it's still light, so weigh up whether you really want to go when it's quiet or whether you want to see it in daylight etc.

Cobras and conspiracy theories: Marrakech day one

So last time I didn't give you the greatest impression of Marrakesh (which I stand by). But it wasn't all bad. Nothing we did or saw was really like "wow, that was amazing, I'll remember that till I die", but we saw some okay things.

I arrived early on Sunday morning and sat straight down to breakfast at the hotel, which was a nice surprise since I didn't even know that was included. We chose to stay in a "riad", i.e. a traditional(ish) Moroccan house arranged around an inner courtyard, located in the old town centre just a couple hundred metres from the main square Jemaa-el-Fna.

This proved invaluable as it is reeeeally hard to find your way around the souks and old city. It's confusing enough to begin with, but it's multiplied by the amount of people giving you unsolicited advice on where to go (often without even knowing where you want to get to). After a few experiences of getting completely turned around and totally lost, and people at one street corner telling you to go one way while at the next they say something completely different, we figured out that it's mostly best to ignore what people tell you. Most of the time, the main place they want to get you to is walking past their shop. And some of the kids probably just plain want to amuse themselves by getting you lost.

Related to the dodgy directioners are the young men who "guide" you around. They appear next to you as you stop to discuss what to do, read a map or even if you're just strolling around with no particular destination in mind and ask where you're going or offer to show you the way. Unfortunately, telling them that you don't need help or that you're not going where they want to take you often doesn't stop them either following along behind you or "leading" from in front of you. We found that no matter how many times we told them we didn't need help or how slowly we tried to dawdle along to demonstrate that we were not, in fact, being guided by them, they were a master at unobtrusively waiting at the next corner or stopping in front of a shop for a few seconds before magically appearing just in front of you again and bounding off to recommence "showing you the way". None of them actually asked us for anything, but we only got rid of a particularly persistent guy wanting to take us to a tannery when I pointed to my inappropriately be-sandled feet and flatly told him there was no way I was going in one of those places dressed like that.

Anyway, our first day started with a quick walk through Jemaa-el-Fna (more on this later) to where a bunch of horse and carriages are lined up to take tourists around. We just wanted a quick trot to the Jardins Majorelle rather than a whole tour, so we had to go through 5 or 6 different coachmen trying to persuade us to do a whole (expensive) trip before we finally got spat out at the end of the line and found a guy who would take us there for cheap.

This was meant to be a photo of cobras being charmed in Jemaa-el-Fna, but mostly turned out being of the angry man chasing us to make us pay for taking a photo. (We ran away.)

Carriages in front of the Koutoubia mosque. It wasn't #VisitMyMosque day so we didn't get to go in

It was the Marrakesh marathon that day so a lot of roads were closed (somewhat erratically - I saw one poor straggler running surrounded by mopeds), which meant that the carriage unceremoniously dumped us out what turned out to be quite far from the Jardins Majorelle.

But it meant we saw a bit of the marathon. For some reason, I find this guy checking his watch funny. Yes, I know, people who run and stuff want to know their pace and everything, but he just looks so casual about it. 

One good thing was that we wandered past a supermarket on the way and found out that they have Galaxy chocolate in Morocco!!! No Minstrels, booo, but still... Why can't continental Europe get on board?

Anyway, the Jardins Majorelle, designed by a painter of the same name in the 1920s and later bought by Yves Saint Laurent. I was expecting flower gardens and wondering what there would be to see there in January, but it turns out to be very appropriately ferny and cactus-y and different. I imagine a welcome patch of shade if you're there in the middle of summer. I'm not quite sure why they're one of *the* must-sees of Marrakech, but they're nice enough.

I think this must be the allegedly famous "Majorelle blue". It's a museum within the gardens which we didn't go inside

There's also a little gallery with a collection of love-themed posters that YSL used to send out annually to his friends

The 70s were the coolest

After the gardens, we walked back to the city centre, wandered around in the souks and had lunch at a funky terrace in the sunshine. (Ahhh, sunshine and 20ish degree weather, oh how I've missed you!)

In the alleys of the Medina somewhere

View of a market stall from the restaurant

While I'm more one to keep myself to myself, Liz will and usually does strike up a conversation with just about everyone she meets. When I'd done the tour of one particular shop, I came up to her in the middle of having a conversation with the female shopkeeper about the Koran. The woman was memorising it via a CD playing on her laptop. So far so good, the conversation turned to (the woman saying) how welcoming Moroccans are and how accepting they are of people of other faiths and you know, of course we're nodding and saying how lovely everyone had been and blah blah blah. And then she mentions the terror attacks in Paris and how that has nothing to do with Islam, and again, obviously we're all "oh, of course not, people don't think that" whatever whatever. Now, the woman's French wasn't amazing, and I'm not claiming that mine is perfect either, so when she said something like "when I saw them shooting a police officer, I thought, 'this is a film'", I just thought she was speaking metaphorically. As in, "I couldn't believe my eyes, it was like a scene from a movie". But she went on a bit and then came back to the topic and said "if you watch the video where they shoot the police officer, you see that no blood comes out. And they have made films in that same place before. It is not real, it is just a film". So yeah, that's where we realised that this woman literally believed that these attacks were staged.

We kind of hummed and hawed a little and wrapped up the conversation and, outside, did the whole "did she say what I think she said?". Looking up online, I found that this is actually a legit conspiracy theory (and by legit, I mean it exists out there, not that I think it's true). I find that pretty horrifying, since if you believe it, it means you're not only denying the facts of what happened, but you're also claiming that someone - it seems to vary whether the conspiracy theorists blame Israel, the French government or the US - deliberately cooked this up in order to blame and persecute Muslims. So that ends up feeding more hate and possibly even provoking more attacks in the future. I don't know why this surprised me in particular, I mean we've all heard the same kind of stuff about 9/11, but I think hearing it live from someone in a Muslim country, rather than just from a random nutjob on the internet really made me realise how widespread and pernicious these things can be.

Anyway, those were pretty much all my adventures on Day One in Marrakesh, before we had a (weird and pretty bland) dinner of Moroccan crepes on a terrace overlooking Jemaa-el-Fna, which by night becomes a huge and bustling marketplace.

Jemaa-el-Fna by night

A fair and a star

I knew there was something I forgot to tell you in my last blog, but I thought that since I'd sorted through all of my photos, I mustn't be missing anything. But I forgot that I didn't take my camera to Luxembourg the other week when we visited the Schueberfoeur.

The Schueberfouer is a fair in Luxembourg that has been going since 1340, when it was founded by John the Blind, King of Bohemia and Count of Luxembourg. That's a pretty sweet pedigree. That makes this year's edition the 674th of the fair!

There's nothing particularly historic when you get in there though. It's pretty much your standard fun-fair, with a mix of carnival rides, food stalls and sideshow attractions. (Jules and I were talking about fairs, and apparently they don't have the sort of school fairs we have back home, where everyone will bake cakes to raise money for the school and if you're lucky you'll get dragged around a field on a "magic carpet ride" hooked up to the back of a 4 wheel drive. Dommage.) There are lots of people - it apparently attracts around 2 million visitors each year, which either means a lot of Luxembourgers go more than once, or a lot of people come from outside the country, since that's around 4 times the country's population. Unlike the Luxembourg national day celebrations, it wasn't tooo crowded, although it was getting pretty packed by the time we left.

At the Schueberfoeur

One of this year's new attractions was the Skyfall, the world's largest movable free-fall ride at 80 metres tall. The view from the top was pretty amazing, but this has got to be one of the most terrifying things I've ever done. I wasn't even so much mentally scared as physically scared. I think there's a point where your body goes "that's it, I'm going to die". Even worse was doing it again after the first time!

Those are people up there

Up we go! Jules stayed on terra firma to take pictures

Waiting for the g-g-g-ghost train

Later on, after enjoying some delicious gromperekichelcher, we took a ride on the Ferris Wheel, itself 55 metres high, which gave us some great views of the fair.

View of the fair from the Ferris Wheel, with the Skyfall in the background

Visiting the fair also gave me the chance to catch up with one of my former colleagues

Jules

Et moi

Fast-forward to this weekend (skipping over our trip to Aachen for the moment) and the big event was our Michelin-starred lunch. Saturday was a gorgeous day, so we went out and about a bit before and after to enjoy it. It was the journées du patrimoine, but unfortunately we didn't have time to see anything since obviously the lunch took up the middle of the day. Instead, we visited the Botanic Gardens. Which if you ask me aren't very botanic, since there were no signs or anything telling you what the different plants were, and the greenhouse-looking thing is actually a (very hot) cultural/music venue as far as we could tell. Not the most impressive place in the world, but quite nice on a lovely sunny day regardless.

A beautiful day in the botanic gardens

Help! Crocodile attack!

It got me!

Then it was off to Bruneau, to "Dine with the Stars". This is a special promotion where you can go to have lunch or dinner in a range of Michelin-starred restaurants throughout Belgium. The deal being, it's a bit cheaper than normal, but you have a "surprise" menu. I sort of wimped out on the surprise even before we got there by writing "please no mushrooms" on the reservation, luckily enough since they were indeed featured in the main dish. Damn mushrooms are everywhere. I also had to get Jules to tell the waiter that I didn't want the coffee icecream dessert. I would have tried most things, but I really hate coffee. I can't even stand the smell. If there was a choice between nothing or a coffee dessert, I'd pick nothing. The restaurant went one better though, and brought me a chocolate tart! Could not have been happier, they called that one right!

First was an amuse-bouche of a mini goat's cheese waffle, followed by a trio of hors d'oeuvres - a pea soup, a cold sea bream preparation and a cod croquette. These were all really nice (especially the deep-fried cod bite), I forgot to take photos though.

Next was a "mosaic" of fish, made of salmon, eel and caviar, served cold. This is the sort of thing I'd never order, and I did leave some of the gelée, but that's actually just because it got in my head. When I was actually eating it without thinking about it, it tasted fine, but once I started really looking at the gelée, I couldn't any more. I don't even like gelée on the top of fruit tarts or whatever.

Fish "mosaic"

Second course was venison, normally served with a mushroom toast, but in my case served with a fig concoction. That thing at the front that looks like cheese is actually celery! The texture was a bit strange on its own, sort of like butter, but when eaten together with the venison it melted into it deliciously. The meat was perfectly cooked - again, venison wouldn't normally be my first choice on a menu - and the pommes dauphines were so good, I could have eaten a plate of them on their own.

Venison

Next was the famous chocolate tart, served with hot liquid chocolate and, hidden in the icecream, something I don't even know what it was, but it crackled like pop rocks when you put it in your mouth. So good! I bet that's how they would describe it on a menu - crackles like pop rocks...

Chocolate tart

It's not often a plate of sweets makes me groan, but the selection below that came with Jules's coffee was the straw that broke our stomachs' spirits. We did still eat them all though...

Mignardises

So, a very nice lunch, and I enjoyed the concept of the surprise menu even if I did cheat a little bit. They were very nice and accommodating about making those changes, which is great. It was nice to do it at lunch as well, as the restaurant was pretty quiet. Only complaint was that it was a little bit too hot in the room for me, and there was no air-conditioning, and the décor is a bit hotelly, but that is being picky.

We took a post-prandial stroll to the nearby Basilica to work off some of the calories (and sober up a bit, at least in my case). It wasn't really anything special inside (and a particularly irritating priest was baptising a baby in there), but it's apparently the 12th biggest church in the world and the world's largest Art Deco-style building (says Wikipedia). It doesn't look all that Art Deco to me, but what do I know?

Sacred Heart basilica

Photographing the view from the basilica steps

Me and Jules at the basilica

Then it was time to go home, watch qualifying on delay and basically loll about nursing our food babies. Good day! And on Sunday, I stayed in my PJs all day and watched Hamilton win the F1, which also counts as a very good day in my book :)