Brussels - Saturday

Today was a museum day, following our Croissants, of course. We drove to the Parliament complex, near John F. Kennedy Park. This is in the Upper Town, filled with fantastic buildings with elegant buildings and private homes, a number of Embassy buildings. We toured the African Museum which is in a palatial home (small scale Versailles), built by one of the Kings. From there drove to the Belvue Museum which has an amazing summary of Belgiun's history from 1830 to early 1970's. Will walk to Grand Place for a dinner outside on our last night in Brussels.

Brussels

A wonderful city. We are staying near the Grand Place. We visited the City Museum and saw the Manneken Pis, famous fountain of little boy urinating, standing naked. It is said to represent the love of the good life in Brussels. Rain passed through last night and morning and as we head to dinner, it is beautiful and cool. Attached photos from the day and statue outside our hotel window. Dinner tonight in lovely restaurant near Ste . Catherine Church and the old fish market - Les Crustace's - fantastic! See photos of beautiful setting.

Honfleur

We stopped here driving from Bayeux to Brussels, Belgium, for lunch and to remember tom's mother, who loved the port.

Bayeux and D Day Beaches

We drove to on Normandy Coast and visited the D-Day Landing museum and lunched. Then we visited Omaha Beach, and the American and German cemeteries. All very moving and interesting . We had watched several movies, so much looked familiar. Our hotel in Bayeux had just been renovated and the room was modern but the building old. We had dinner one night at a one star Micheline restaurant in a beautiful chateau. We enjoyed seeing the famous tapestry, right across from our hotel. This is a town worth more time.

Le Mont-St-Michel

We had dinner in St-Malo, a beautiful walled city, Sunday and Monday,
after p.d. (see picture of basket in prior post) it was off to M-S-M. We had door to door bus transport from the new parking lot, but then it was all our own two feet. We climbed to the top, had lunch on the way down and bought gifts for the Ekkers children.
We returned to our apt. and had dinner in as we recovered from our climb.
It was overcast and drizzled for much of the time, but it never really bothered us.

St. Brieuc, St. Malo & Mont St. Michel

We drove to St. Brieuc for a night then to our apartment near le Mont for two nights. The apt. was a B&B in a well renovated old farm building. The owner was a trained chef who came to realize he was only seeing his children for four hours each Monday, so bought this place and renovated it. Here are pictures of the place.

Dancing in the street

Lynn and Tom had a delicious fish dinner at chez Morizon and after we all
went to a street party. The music was by a trio playing various American hip hop type tunes.....and we danced!

Menhirs on summer solstice

Tom was walking past the field of monoliths in Quiberon on June 22 when he noticed that they were lined up with the setting sun. No real surprise, given the date, but he hadn't seen this mentioned. I saw the shadow of one hitting the one ahead of it. It made for beautiful pictures. Think of how important the solstice was to many diverse civilizations!

Carnac and the megaliths

We learned about "menhirs" today. This in the town of Carnac. These are several thousand monoliths, large stones arranged in fields, some 6,000 years old. There is a field one block from our hotel and I will post a picture latte. Here are pictures of and from our hotel.