More family, where the son of our Liege hosts (and my second cousin) lives. We arrived to find we were invited to accompany him to his friend’s exhibition opening in a fringe space called ‘Pianocktail’. It is named after an object imagined by Boris Vian in his novel “L’ecume des Jours”. There are only three known in the world, one of which was there in this space. See here for an explanation (and below for a picture):http://florica.wordpress.com/2008/10/14/pianocktail/
The space is a bit of a collective for artists where like minded people can gather to show their work or put on a play or whatever for part of the week. For the rest of the time it’s a restaurant where the idea is you pay what you can afford. It was great to go there, as I don’t think it’s something your everyday tourist to Brussels would see. Following that we went to dinner, where we also sampled some matched Belgian Beer. Beer is taken seriously in Belgium and the waiter was keen to recommend just the right one to go with our meals, including a ‘Ducassis’ which is the Kir Royal of Beer, with a Blackberry flavouring. It sounds odd, but was surprisingly good, despite the offputting colour!
After getting back on the tourist trail to see the Magritte Museum (interesting to see his life but it seems the best of his works where on permanent display elsewhere), we then went to see a great exhibition called Turbulences at the Villa Empain, an art-deco private house turned into a gallery space – a collection of works exploring movement in various forms.
We finished our stay in Brussels at a traditional beer cafe called a la Becasse which was buried down an alleyway near the city centre. It was very rustic and we were able to sample a few of their specialities on a beer tasting plate – a good way of trying a few types and keeping your head clear at the same time!
We had originally wanted to go to Amsterdam to see the newly Renovated Rijksmuseum, but after seeing so many other museums in the previous weeks and arriving in Amsterdam to find the weather finally improving we decided to skip that and just enjoy being able to spend some serious time ourside. Unlike a lot of the other places we had been, Amsterdam was new to me and I think we both would have like to have stayed longer. It would have been great to spend a few days there seeing it by bike – the city is so well set up for cycling and you need to be on your guard otherwise you’ll accidentally find yourself walking on one of the myriad of cycle lanes and being knocked over. Combined with the generous green space, the canals and the old buildings slowly getting wonkier more perilously out of shape, Amsterdam sure looks like a place to head back to!
