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(Still more extra stuff from Brussels.)
There we were, sitting outside the beautiful St. Michael and St. Gudula Cathedral.
People have been worshipping perhaps as far back as the ninth century. This building went up between the 13th and 16th centuries. The stained glass windows and confessionals are that old. Just think of it. That place was old when the U.S. was new.
Don’t worry. We went inside. I produced a little video. You can see it here.
(A few extra shots from our last visit to London, because it is summertime and our trip was grand.)
We were playing around with the selfie stick. Yes, we have one, and it facilitates the production of quality photographs. We’re actually laughing at you for not having one.
Anyway, this was outside of our flat in London. We were waiting on a family friend to stop by. She goes way back with The Yankee’s folks and lives and works in London. Turns out she lives not basically around the corner from where we were staying. We only had time to take a few pictures:
(This is extra material from our trip to Germany because it is summertime and our trip was grand.)
The food was very inexpensive. That’s the first thing. We went to a few places where the bottled water — which you do pay for — costed as much as the food. The grocery store was pretty cheap too.
The second thing we learned while eating at A Magica, a pizza place, on the suggestion of a friend. Germans eat their pizza with fork and knives. All of them. Sometimes you have to use a fork. I’ve done it. You’ve done it. No shame in it. To see an entire restaurant doing it was a bit unnerving.
Nearby the pizza parlor was Gethsemane Church, built in 1893:
The architect here used both Romanesque Revivalism with round arch windows and neo-Brick Gothic with traceries and rib vaults in the construction. His work wasn’t damaged during World War II, and there is a plate commemorating the German resistance against the Nazi government. Like many churches, this one was a meeting place for East Germans opposed to that government. The statue in the foreground is the Benedictive Christ, previously stood at the former Church of Reconciliation. That church was destroyed by the East German government in 1985 to make more space for the Berlin Wall. Since reunification it has been a central locale of civil rights groups and peace movements.
Just down the street was a cool sign for a burger joint:
I wonder how they eat those.
(An extra memory from our time in Belgium.)
When we got off the train in Brussels, this just down from the station.
It seemed an aggressive, passive-aggressive sign. We ate elsewhere that day, but cake seemed the better of the ideas. Very hip, hipster-ish place.
This is the tenth Fourth of July we’ve spent together. We took part in part of our regular tradition: getting ribs.
We missed the fireworks because we mis-timed things. But it was raining anyway. Clearly we got the important part right.
Last year we skipped the ribs for reasons that we’ve both forgotten. Had to do with staying in with friends, I think. That’s why we missed the picture then, why there’s a placeholder there now. Next year, maybe, we’ll get it right again.
Nevertheless, the traditional Fourth photograph collage:
