Brussells "Carefully balanced on the edge of a hole in time"

(written by Colin)

Hi All,

No idea really...  ??

Tin Tin, Captain Haddock & Snowy

We have spent a wonderful week in Brussels spending time with my brother Peter, his Wife Caroline and their family.  Unfortunately I did not manage to get one of them all together for a pic -so the below is missing Niels and Klara..

Peter,Caroline,Paul & Rafael

It has been very relaxing.  This is the first part of the trip where we have been out of the UK and I guess as expected the first part that has felt a bit like a holiday.  Kizzy and I have felt like doing not much but sleeping !!   You know how sometimes on  the first week of a holiday you just want to catch up on sleep  - this last week has been like that.   Having said that - it could be the influence of our 3 week old new nephew Raphael - who sleeps at least 70% of the time !

Raphael Sleeping like an Angel

He really is the most gorgeous baby.  I have taken a good few pics and you can review them on the Picasa album. We have also had the opportunity to see  our other nephews Paul - now 18 months old and Niels - 11 years old and our Niece - Klara - 8 years old.. Paul is a real cutey as you can see below..  He is a real daddy's boy and  has not been  so easy to make friends with.. Kizzy has had more success.  He is very fickle !

They are a great bunch..

Paul

Klara

Niels

Brussells itself is a nice place.  There is not much too it really.  Nice parks and a nice city center.  Peter and Caroline can walk to work and it seems that the pace of life is much much slower than in London.    They have some ...  interesting (mmm)...  traditions - like  a statue of a boy peeing. Apparently they have 800 costumes on rotation..  but the current incarnation is Elvis...  We had heard that in the name of equality ( being the home of the European Commission after all) - that there is a female version - but the local tourist office does not list its location and thankfully we did not stumble across it..

Manneken Pis AKA Elvis..

Kizzy and tacky tourist Manneken Pis

Colin and tacky tourist Manneken Pis

We took some interesting walks through the city  on a couple of the days - we saw a very strange art exhibition which was about surveillance, terrorism by a South African artist - Jane Alexander - who did a lot of work about Apartheid,  Very disturbing and weird - not really to our taste... I managed to get one shot in before the blokes sat behind in the picture here shut me down....  (not sure of that was part of the work or not !)

and by night we developed a serious addiction to the MAD MEN series on DVD..   Just a few more episodes to go...

Mad Men DVD's

Tomorrow we head to Cologne for a few days and then Berlin....