This spectacular display, enticing diners to stop at their restaurant, was on the narrow pedestrian Rue des Bouchers (Butchers Street) in central Brussels, where Anne and I were visiting in January 1995. Heat lamps and relatively mild winter weather made dining outdoors not only possible but very enjoyable. It might have been at this restaurant or one down the street that we had our first bucket of mussels with "French" fries--a national dish of Belgium, newly being 'copied' in the USA; I do remember our main course was monkfish medallions in a creamy sauce.
We were visiting Anne's brother Paul and his wife, Monique, who were operating a Brussels restaurant, about which I'll say much more later in this post. We'd seen a remarkably cheap fare for flights to Amsterdam, an easy train ride from Brussels, and with available time off during our winter break, we were able to take advantage of it.
Before reporting on our trip in this post and the next, I'll show the slides I took during the second half of 1994, after our return from Hawai'i. I see that we visited what was then called Indian Summer, a Native American festival on the Milwaukee Summerfest grounds. Here's a photo of my mother-in-law, Judy, next to a statue in the Third Ward, where we'd parked for the nearby festival:
The photos I took of Native American dancers are not my best, but here they are:
I do like this one of some of the performers taking a break at the lakeside:
Back at home I took two photos of our friend Joe Ross. I'm not sure what the fish object is that he's holding: is it something to drink from or is he just pretending? In any case, the photos give glimpses of my old TV and stereo setup on that side of the living room and of the schefflera that I still have:
The only other photos I took that fall are of a camping trip that Anne and I took with the kids. I don't remember where it was, though clearly there was a lake . . .
. . . and some woods:
Here are Aron and Anne in front of our tents:
And Anne and Becky in this one:
Wherever it was, it was a beautiful fall weekend:
And so on to Amsterdam. Anne had been there a couple of years previously, with Aron, visiting Paul and Monique when they were living in the Dutch capital. On this occasion we stayed at least one night before taking the train down to Brussels.
Soon after arriving at the Central Station from Schiphol Airport (and presumably leaving our luggage at a nearby hotel) we started walking through Amsterdam, taking time to fortify ourselves with the city's favorite street food: fries with a mayonnaise topping:
Here's another street view near the Central Station:
Just off one of these streets was a beguinage, a sort of residence area, almost a cloister, for unmarried women: an old tradition in the Low Countries. We were struck by the clusters of flowers even in January, and by the peacefulness of the setting so close to busy traffic:
A different sort of architectural surprise was a movie palace that we came upon--quite a renowned one, though I hadn't known about it. The Tuschinski Theatre opened in 1921: its design mixes older Art Nouveau/Jugendstil elements with newer Art Deco plus lots of "Oriental" touches.
I wasn't able to get good photos of the impressive lobby (but as usual, I'll include them for the record):
Here's a typical wintertime view of buildings along one of Amsterdam's canals:
And here are two twilight views:
My next photos are of Brussels and of Paul and Monique's restaurant, the Thunderbird Café, the first and perhaps to this day the only Belgian restaurant featuring American Southwestern cuisine--and some nights live music too!
The food was fantastic, starting with Paul's signature Painted Desert (corn-and-red-pepper) Soup and corn bread:
I took a number of photos at the Thunderbird over the course of several days, but I'll show them all together here. On that first night we followed the soup with shrimp-papaya enchiladas with ancho chile sauce and avocado/tomatillo salsa:
Another night one of us had the enchiladas as a main course while the other had the lime-tequila chicken over spinach tagliatelle:
And on yet another evening you see turkey mole enchiladas on the left, and grilled tuna topping a potato pancake with tamarind chipotle mint sauce:
My photograph of the bar-restaurant interior didn't turn out so well:
Paul and Monique lived north of the city in Tervuren. This was their house:
It was an easy commute into the city, and Anne and I spent our days wandering around the Belgian capital. Naturally we visited the Grand Place:
A few blocks away, at the medieval St Nicholas Church, I was struck by the way shops had been built into the church walls:
Also nearby are the typical gabled house you see below and the narrow "restaurant street," the Rue des Bouchers, where I also took the photo at the top of this post:
Brussels was a major center of Art Nouveau architecture in the latter's heyday (c.1890-1910), and Anne and I tried to see as much of it as we could via walking and public transportation. A major stop was the house and workshop of Victor Horta:
The Horta House is open to the public, so one can see the fantastic interiors:
In the next photo the startlingly narrow townhouse is the Maison Saint-Cyr; but I haven't been able to identify the elegant corner building in the photo that follows.
Nor can I identify the location of the row of buildings at twilight, below, or the sculpture with its incongruous crane in the background:
Anne and I rented a car to take a couple of side trips while we were staying in Brussels: one to northern France to see the great cathedrals of Amiens and Rheims, and one to the Ardennes and beyond where Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany meet. I'll report on those excursions in the next post.
Comments