July 21 is Belgium’s National Day. On this occasion there is plenty of stuff to do in Brussels: a parade, free tastings by the Court’s suppliers (we applaud Delacre, but were disappointed by Neuhaus), amusement parks for the kids, … Even though I’m not that into these “national” days, Karolien and I went and enjoyed it.
Semper Paratus
Cookies by Delacre
An old man's parade
The police demonstrating
Isn't that my neighbors dog?
Prince Phillipe
Queen Paola
Last weekend, Karolien and I joined K&T for a trip to Canterbury: 6.5 hours one way trip, 7 hours there and then – of course – 6.5 hours to return home. We joined them as a gift for T.’s birthday, but had great fun ourselves. Canterbury reminds me of Bruges, while somewhat less impressive. The weather was great, though.
Englishman
No speaker and no audience
In the cathedral
The cathedral
English outsider
Appearing in the window
The first shot of Britain instead of the United Kingdom
Wayne Rooney's ancestors?
The past weekend Leuven In Scène took place. To be honest, I’m not sure what it is. A city-wide carnival is the best way to describe it, I guess. Karolien and I only went to an event on Ladeuze where dansers performed acrobatic air tricks with the library as a backdrop. Beautiful!
On Saturday and Sunday and Monday, we discovered the calm beauty of Maastricht. We strolled around the streets, had a few drinks and then walked some more. Maastricht is a beautiful place, and I have some pictures to show for it (click for a larger – and sharper – version, as usual).
Leuven In Scène
Leuven in Scène - Building up
Leuven In Scène - Apotheosis
Some jealous bikers in Maastricht
A beautiful scene in Maastricht
Near city hall
On the old city walls
A student, I guess
A nice place to walk
A nice place to drink
A nice place to rest 1
A nice place to rest 2
A nice place to be together 1
A nice place to be together 2
Maastricht, a nice place
Yesterday the much anticipated MSI event took place. MSI is the reseach group at the Faculty of Business and Economics that I am part of, so yes, this could be considered a work outing. Because we already spend quite some time together outside of work, however, it felt quite different to most of us.
The event comprised a guided tour in the center of Brussels and a dinner in a local restaurant. Since most of us visited our capital city before, we didn’t learn that much (besides a neat word called ‘sneukelen’ – which apparently means to have a little taste of something – and the fact that the food in the large majority of restaurants in Rue De Bouchers is prepared by only two different kitchens). Yet the atmosphere was rather nice and – obviously – I took some pictures to show you.
Leaving in Leuven
On our way to Brussels' Central Station
Meeting in front of De Beurs
Having a drink after the tour
Going to the restaurant
Meeting people in the restaurant
Setting up the presentation
Honoring a very dear - and leaving - colleague
Dear Reader,
The past weekend I went to Dinant with Karolien and her parents in their mobilhome. After arriving on Friday, we were so tired that we did little else than going to sleep (see picture 1). On Saturday we first went for a bike ride on rail road tracks on adapted go-carts with wheels without tires. As a direct consequence, we are all in perfect shape now: when not biking ourselves, we sat on the passenger seats as if it was a power plate. The ride consisted out of two parts: going forward and going back. In the mean time, there was time for rest (see pictures 3, 4 and 5).
In the afternoon, we first took a walk around the Abbey of Maredsous. The nature was just stunning at times (see pictures 6 and 7). A guided tour around the monastery soon followed, yet this wasn’t completely satisfactory. The guide was perfectly capable of speaking Dutch (the tour was officially bilingual), yet even though some Dutch children were present, she preferred to speak French exclusively. This didn’t seem to bother her, as this was a “cultural event”, implying that addressing children was redundant (see pictures 8 and 9). As a Flemish person I am fully aware of the language issues in Belgium, but I felt most sorry for those children that seemed genuinely interested in what this lady had to say. But – apparently – the majority rule seemed to apply here and only French was used during the tour (making some jokes about an ‘alarmbel’ didn’t seem to help and could upset some other – very friendly – Walloons, so we all just went along with it). In the evening we ate the Maredsous cheese that was bought and went for a small, local tour around the area.
On Sunday we headed for Dinant itself. We visited the Citadel (see picture 11) where the father of Karolien had his picture taken when he was 3 and 19 (or 20). I took a similar picture now, so it would be interesting to see those three pictures next to each other. After taking a boat ride on the Maas (see picture 12), we headed back to Kessel-Lo.
Arriving on Friday
Making sandwiches for lunch on the rail road track
Lunch after biking uphill and waiting to go back
Waiting to get permission to bike back
Resting while waiting
Scenery during our walk
Walking
Buying tickets for the bilingual tour
The tour guide making the children bored
In the evening: thinking of new Bongo gift certificates
A (much) friendlier tour guide on the citadel in Dinant
The boat ride
This blog seems to devolve to a weekly thing when life isn’t very exiting, it seems. Well, as long as I can keep filling a weekly post with pictures, that’s enough for me.
Looking back
I miss Stanford and Palo Alto quite often. So now both mine and Karolien’s pictures of our road trip have been processed, it becomes time to review the first three months of 2010. Plenty of pictures take me back, especially those of San Francisco. Below you can find a small selection, but I’m sure many more will follow.
Looking forward
Today Karolien and I went to J.’s future home. It really seems to come together and I can imagine they’ll be happy over there.
Chinatown in San Francisco
Chinatown -The beauty and the salon
Spanish hair dresser
The hair dresser - A happy customer
A Mission shop
J. and her future home
J. contributing to her future home
After visiting Antelope Canyon, our trip took us to the Grand Canyon. Due to the icy weather, the number of possible hikes were limited and the Kaibab trail was recommended the most. Therefore we ended up doing it. It wasn’t very long, but because of the thin and cold air, it became rather physical. Well, to be honest, it is also my fault a bit. The guide said that for every time unit you walk down in the Canyon, you had to triple it when walking up. I wanted to see if I could do it in just twice the time, but ended up going up in less time than going down.
The day after, we visited the Grand Canyon from a helicopter. Papillion was the cheapest company to offer such tours, so we went with them. You have to give a time window when you will go into the air and we were supposed to take off any time between 11 and 12. When driving down to the airport, it began to snow and this resulted in a one hour delay of our departure. Mistakes made by the crew made us wait another hour (and almost one more), but then we took off. A spectacular view was the result. Unfortunately pictures has to be taken through a plastic, scratched and dirty window, so these pictures need some heavy editing. Nonetheless, I have one included below. Later that day we drove down past Lake Havasu to Eherberg, in close proximity of Joshua Tree.
Naturally, we visited Joshua Tree the next day. It was a quick visit on our route to Los Angeles, where we arrived in the late afternoon – just early enough to explore it by foot. Yesterday we went to its beaches, Venice beach and Santa Monica beach. Quite a variety in characters: tarot card readers, rollerskating people, bodybuilders and medicinal marijuana doctors were screaming for attention.
Today we’ll visit Santa Barbara and drive up the coast line to Monterrey. This will be our last stop before San Francisco, where will will complete our tour on Wednesday.
The Grand Canyon from a helicopter
Joshua Tree
Walt Disney Concert Hall
A girl playing in the fountain near Hollywood Boulevard
Modern Times at Hollywood Boulevard
A random dude outdoors
I'm not interested in stealing your art, I just want to capture the art on that dude's back!
The last post ended with Karolien and me going to Mariposa Grove on Wednesday. A day later we went from those snowy plains to the salty plains in Death Valley. It sure was beautiful there, but the tunnel view at Yosemite stole my heart. Death Valley wasn’t as hot as it could be, so we were able to go for short walks and stay a bit longer. In the afternoon we headed for Las Vegas. Still tired from the heat in Death Valley and the driving, I must confess we weren’t into it the first evening. I even recall myself saying: “seeing this place makes me loathe mankind”. People spitting on the street in front of you in a disgusting way and the overload of (extremely) drunk spring breakers may have been at the root of this. The day after we took it more slowly and got to appreciate Sin City a bit more. After Las Vegas we headed for Zion. We arrived on Friday evening and went to visit this national park on Saturday. It sure is beautiful! We did some hikes and on Sunday we went horseback riding. Due to my complete inexperience, I was assigned a ‘mean’ horse, named Butter Cup. Later that day we went to Bryce, but instead of a red park, it was white, completely covered in a man’s height of snow. A bummer.
Later today we’ll be heading to Page and hopefully we leave the snow behind!
Death Valley - Zabriskie Point
Death Valley - Zabriskie Point
Las Vegas - Yeah Baby!
Las Vegas - The Venetian Hotel
Zion - Upper Emerald Pool
Zion - Canyon Overlook
Bryce - Snow
Bryce - Raven
Bryce - Viewpoint
My father is in Palo Alto for a small week. He arrived around noon today at the airport in San Francisco. It was really nice seeing him again, even though my head (and stomach) was still pounding a bit from the evening before when G., C. and I went to the Nut House on California Avenue. It was a splendid evening, studying probabilities in a Yahtzee-like drinking game. We all lost, by the way.
My dad rented a car. A normal-sized Chevy. Yet the sales lady from Avis knew how to convince my dad to go for a Ford Mustang in bright red instead (see the not so very great picture below). We took it to his place, he checked in and we headed for San Francisco where the Chinese New Year Parade took place. It wasn’t as special as I hoped for, but as it became darker, the lights were really pretty sometimes. The day ended with a steak. Yes!
At Nut House
Being persuaded
My kingdom for a horse
Checking In
My father at Union Square
Parade
Under her umbrella
A lot of politicians participated
Dreamy bokeh at the parade
"I call him ... Goldenboy!"
Parade
Do you have that too, not being able to stop thinking? It happens to me quite often and it can be really annoying when trying to sleep. Just to give you an example, yesterday evening I was listening to Maria’s Bed, by Bruce Springsteen. It gave me a visual image of lying in the middle of the bed. So I asked myself the logical question “Am I lying in the middle of my bed?” To make a rather long series of thoughts shorter, I ended up trying to find an algebraic formula for the location of the middle point of a normal density function, parameterized for its variance. With my eyes closed. And the right half of my brain trying to sleep.
Maybe it’s being alone for too long (this reminds me of a Seinfeld episode), maybe it’s the stimulating environment. Whatever it is, it resulted in me being tired today. The train rides to San Francisco were the most enjoyable: just sitting and listening to music. I went to a small exhibition on aerial photography and LAB 3 printing (nice supersize pictures, given that some were taken in the ’70s), walked around at Union Square and sat at Borders for a book or two.
Tomorrow there’s work (and laundry). Looking forward to it too. As already mentioned, my pc has been down so I got behind on the latest problem set that’s due on Tuesday. But I have a feeling I will be well-rested the day after tomorrow.
Around Metreon building
Around Metreon building
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