August 17 – Brussels

First stop was back to the Grand Place... 

for another look at the Floral Tapestry and then off to the Brussels City Museum, where we paid a larger than average entrance fee that also gave us access to the balcony.  From there we had an excellent bird’s eye view of the tapestry.  We then wandered the museum for a bit.  The building is housed in one of the old guild halls and dates back centuries.  Consequently, it has very interesting architecture…

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Watch video of carpet.

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This photo is distorted due to a panorama shot.

and, as a museum, it has a lot of old artifacts from early Brussels.

There was also an interesting and colorful exhibition of Belle Epoque (period from approximately 1885 to 1914) Posters. 

We then found our way to the Bourse (Brussels Stock Exchange) where there were seven mini‑floral tapestries being laid out on the plaza in front.   Each tapestry was from a different country and was a floral representation of a UNESCO church in that country.  The countries were Catalonia (section of Spain), Japan, Germany, Spain, Italy, Malta, Mexico and Belgium.  Most were a long ways from being completed.  

It looked like they were making the lines for the cathedrals using a soil or soil amendment that the pressed into long strip molds.  The process of transferring these lines onto the pattern appeared to be very exacting and difficult.

In the late afternoon we used our pre-paid tickets to the City Hall to go up to the balcony for another bird’s eye view of the tapestry.  On the way up we were able to see bits of the city hall.  Construction on the building started in 1420 and this is the only medieval building remaining on the Grand Place.  It is still in use today.

The views from the balcony were great and the crowds pretty packed.  There did not appear to be any effective means of making people move on and it appeared that some people were prepared to stay until tonight’s show.

It didn’t look like they had set up fireworks for tonight’s show and since we had such good views last night we decided to not bother with the crowds and stayed in for the evening.