Tapis de fleurs 2012

'Tis that time of year again! The flower tapestry in Brussels has returned!

 Here's my post from when Eric and I checked it out in 2010. Since Eric's still recovering from his surgery, I ended up venturing to Brussels on my own in order to do a "smash & grab" type of adventure in order to get some pictures of the tapestry. As much as he wanted to go, it's for the best that he didn't attempt it due to pushy tourists in addition to uneven cobblestones everywhere.

I left bright and early this morning...and if you know me, early and I don't mix well. At least I was able to catch up on some of my reading while cruisin on the train :)

 

Once I made it to Brussels, I waddled my way down to Grand Place since that's where the flower tapestry was waiting for massive hordes of people to "ooooh" and "awwwweee" over it. Keep in mind, the official opening time for it was 9am...I got there at 8:55a and there was already a massive line of people waiting to get into the Grand Place hotel in order to access the balcony for a view. 

This isn't the line...

......this is.

Here's a map to get a better idea of where I was. The red star is the train station, the green is where I walked, the yellow star is the end of the line to get into the Grand Place hotel, and the orange line is...well..the line to get into Grand Place hotel. 

Luckily, the line moved along fairly quick...I think it took about twenty five minutes to get into the hotel itself, so in the mean time, I managed to take some pictures of the buildings and whatever else I fancied.

The fabulous balcony everyone migrated towards in order to get a better view of the tapestry itself:

 

While I was going through and editing all the pictures, Eric really liked this one :) 

Once I managed to actually make it onto the balcony (after seeing a few people get kicked out of the line for not respecting the "no pictures" rule for inside the hotel), I kinda had to fight my way to the front so I could get some pictures of the flowers. 

Oh, and right before I  made my way into the building, I noticed they were selling t-shirts of the whole event...the image was one of the patterns from the tapestry, but in the shape of Africa. Kinda confused me, but I just guess that was the theme for this years' carpet. SO, I hopped online to find some handy dandy information for ya about it and here ya go:

The begonias are traveling!

This summer, you will have the chance to escape to faraway lands, while staying at the heart of our capital city. No need for any philtre or strange potion to get there... The magic will work on its own and when you visit the Grand-Place, you will be transported to the centre of a mysterious continent: Africa! An extraordinary tapestry of shimmering patterns recalling designs from the tribes of Ethiopia, Congo, Nigeria, Botswana, and Cameroun, a harmonious fusion which will carry you away for a magnificent trip.Such a breath-taking result takes months of preparation. Landscape architects, technicians and hundreds of voluntary participants, colour specialists for the occasion, took part in this most unusual adventure. This extraordinary weaving of begonias will be exhibited during 5 long days. A mad challenge for an unforgettable event, which you will be able to admire from the Grand-Place or the balconies of the town Hall. All roads lead to this multicoloured rendezvous...

Why Africa?

This part of the world stands out for the extraordinary diversity of its populations, its landscapes, its cultures and its colours. It has the power to make us dream to the rhythm of its dances, its drums and its performing arts, reflecting age old traditions. And so past and present echo one another, as do the here and the elsewhere, old Europe and young Africa, permanent contrasts. The continent has lessons of life to offer and proposes other perspectives and alternatives to the systems that we have used for so long.It is this diversity, so rich and inspiring, that we want to honour and represent this year: a carpet of flowers, of course, but enriched with an even more enchanting palette. Our artists have combined the begonias with barks, precious materials, sands, soils and pigments...
Come and walk along its borders, wander around the equator of our city. Enjoy recognizing the origins of the beautiful patterns which make up this strange fabric that unfolds before your eyes.
 

A worthy challenge

It's a double bet this year. The first aspect is symbolizing an entire continent, so rich and mulch-faceted, on 1.800 m2. The second is the duration of the display: the flowers and materials will stay fresh and bright throughout the five days. They will enchant you thanks to the attention and care which they will receive over the course of this beautiful event.

Annnnnnd here's a video I managed to get while getting poked and prodded by various tourists smushing in to get pictures:

Alright...why the random door latch? OK, you're not allowed to take pictures within the hotel, but when I was making my way outta there once I was done with the balcony, there was a room on the right hand side that caught my eye. It's a large hall that looks like it's used for ceremonies of some sort. Of course, I couldn't get a picture of it due to the rules (and a guard standing there to ensure people didn't take pictures)...but I was totally enamored  with the door handle because of it's design. Isn't it cool looking? After a little bit, the guard asked me "Do you want a picture of that?"...of course I jumped at the opportunity cause I don't know how I'd go about describing this thing. So, once the coast was clear, I snapped this pic and went on my merry way and the guard gave me a thumbs up for not looking like an obvious tourist :)

Here's another pic once I made it back to the ground level and made my way through the sea of tourists that ended up doubling in numbers while I was in the hotel. 

This kinda gives you an idea as to how packed all those flowers are throughout the entire tapestry. The crazy thing is that they don't get blown all over the place when the wind picks up! Then again, they've been making these sort of tapestries since the seventies, so you'd think they'd have it down to a science by now, ya know?

Oh yeah, and there's an official Hard Rock Cafe now in Grand Place! So, of course I had to make my way over there to get myself a hand dandy and oh so spiffy  bottle opener to go with the rest of my Hard Rock collection :) 

AND, there's this guy who does beautiful beautiful water color paintings from around Brussels.

He was actually working on another painting, so I got to watch him for about fifteen minutes while he was painting the actual flower carpet and then moved onto the sky. I gotta hand it to the guy, he's got some serious patience while he's working! Tourists were asking him everything under the sun, he was selling stuff and painting...handy dandy!

Last time Eric and I were there, we picked up two different panoramic paintings of Grand Place, so this time I opted to get two different styles since we have a thing about getting paintings from various places we visit. Since we wasn't there, I just picked whatever I thought were the prettiest :)  

After all that, I was spent. Totally spent. There's a super hot heat wave here and it's absolutely miserable, especially in Brussels since it seemed like the cobblestone was making it 10x hotter than necessary, LOL. Keep in mind, by the time I was catching the train to come back home, it was 10:15a and it was already sitting at 80*. I wanted to die. Despite being a Californian and all that nonsense, Momma don't do hot. As I'm writing this out, it's 6:44p and it's still 84*. BLUH. I'm sure there's some people reading this and laughing because they probably deal with hot weather all the time. Well, live in Belgium for a bit and then have a heat wave sprung on ya. I betcha you'd be singing the same song as me! lol....SO, when I was waiting on my train to show up, I think I earned a fabulous raspberry / blackcurrant frappachino from the ever so wonderful Starbucks that opened not too long ago in Brussels Centraal station. 

Made it back home, plopped in front of a fan and made it a point to hammer out this post for ya. If you haven't seen the floral tapestry and you live in Belgium, by all means, you should check it out. It's absolutely gorgeous and it's amazing to realize how much time went into making something like that for people to see. I mean, there's folks who travel far and wide to check that thing out. So, if you have the chance to just hop on a train (which you can travel for only 15 euro round trip this month!!), take the time to go do it! Besides, help yourself to an awesome Belgian waffle while you're at it. 

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B is for...

Brussels!! 

Just kidding..not that kind of Brussels. I'm thinkin' more like the capital of Belgium. 

A friend and I headed up since she needed to conduct some business with the US Embassy. I had absolutely no desire to drive through Brussels with my Xterra (I don't care how many people tell me it's "easy"!) so we figured we'd make a day of it with the train..and I'm SO glad we did! 

Once the Embassy was all taken care of, it was only 10:30a ....we weren't expecting to be done that fast! Seriously, Belgians are insanely slow with processing paperwork, so we were shocked with how quick the whole process went.If you've ever seen "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy", I genuinely believe they HAVE to be related to the Vogons..someway, somehow!

So, what to do? We walked over to Grand Place and did what any regular Belgian would do...we had a beer. B is also for beer, how 'bout that? :) I swear, my friend had one as well ..she was in mid sip when I took the picture, so, I'm not the only morning lush. 

Know what else Belgians do? They people watch while sitting at an outdoor cafe area. Hard life, right? We figured we'd give it a shot to see what it was like...I think we got the hang of it while soaking up some sun and watching tourists do their "thing":

It's been so long since I've had any alcohol (and I'm not really supposed to have any right now as is), I got pretty tipsy. To be fair, Belgian beer is pretty potent, so the Heineken got me drunky while the beer my friend got had her feeling fabulous as well.What happens to some people when they get drunk? Munches. 

Know what rhymes with Brussels? 

MUSSELS! 

We were originally looking for our favorite Chinese place, but apparently they went out of business (sadsies!), so, we opted to do the next best thing which was to have some Belgian mussels. Yes, Belgium is known for their beer, their chocolates and the waffles, but they also make some UH-mazing mussels (or so I've been told). After being here for three years already, it was time to have some! 

No joke, if you want your ego petted, you should walk down some of the alleyways throughout Grand Place, especially near the seafood area. All of the restaurants have outdoor patio set ups (at least during this time of year) and they have employees who stand outside and try to talk customers into a table to eat. Man oh man, we heard every compliment under the sun!  After dodging some Guido looking guys, cheesy one liners and some places that looked rather sketchy, we finally found a place where we wanted to sit down. Although I will say that the guy working the place we were at (we watched him during out entire meal) was hilarious because he was SO aggressive with the patrons, it was way over the top and scared people away!

After scrolling through the menu, we opted to get mussels in some garlic and cream sauce with a side of fritz. OH. MY. GOODNESS. It was absolutely out of this world! You just eat the meat and as you plug along, you toss the mussel shells in a second bowl they give you..it actually kinda reminded me of shelling crabs. Do all the hard work first and then savor the meat, lol. The sauce was fabulous and it tasted delicious, and it didn't have that overly fishy smell. Love love love! I'm tempted to try to make some mussels myself since I can get 'em from the local market...hmmmmmmm....

Once we stuffed ourselves silly, we strolled across the alley to the famous Delirium Cafe, which boasts a Guinness World Record certificate that states "The most varieties of beer commercially available was 2,004 at Delirium Cafe', Brussels, Belgium when counted on 9 January 2004". The only reason why we went there was to pick up some t-shirts for our husbands because, hey, the cafe is awesome and the staff is always nice in addition to wanting some cool shirts. Sure enough, the bartenders were extremely friendly (one of 'em even offered us some of his lunch, lol) and actually educated me on a mug I was really intrigued with:

It was designed by Charles Quint who was actually from Ghent, Belgium. After doing a lil bit of research, I found a picture explaining the story of the odd little mug:

Since I can't read French, I had to rely on Google Translate to gimme a hand with the story translation, and here's what I was able to get out of it:

A beautiful autumn day, after a chase has part of Walcot, Charles was wanting to quench his thirst. He went into a fine inn the boss offered him a pot of beer, holding it by its handle. Charles V was therefore obliged to enter the pot with both hands. Leaving the city, desiring to taste a new beer this wonderful, he ordered a servant to send the boss a pot with two handles, order for it to enter it in the future with one hand.

Some time after, Charles V and his retinue halted in the same Augerge. The madam presents him the pot of beer this time, holding the two handles together. Charles V did not lose heart and has ordered his servant to send a three-handled pot.

The following year, Charles made ​​another visit to the shelter. This time, the boss handed him the pot, holding hands in two handles, but the third handle turned to her. Once again, Charles was obliged to enter the pot with both hands. It was only when Charles V. had given the order to send a inn a pot has a fourth handle and the problem was solved. It is following a legend that this beautiful today, in many hostels have found beercans fitted with four handles. 

Someone sounds a little OCD to me! When you're an Emperor, I suppose no one will question something you want, right?

Anyway, we had a fantastic time in the Belgian capital, enjoyed some amazing weather and kept ourselves out of the house for a while! Gotta love living the European lifestyle :)

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Brussels Impact!

I embraced my inner red neck last night. Yes, I admit it. I went with Eric to watch some good ol' fashioned male soap opera....which is also known as TNA Wrestling. 

We had actually traveled to London last year for Eric to attend one of their events..I could've sworn I did a blog post about it, but apparently not. I blame my shiny syndrome for that! Anyway, we did the whole shebang then by taking the EuroStar train through the Chunnel, arrived at London St Pancras Station then hopped on the Tube to get to our hotel by Wembley Arena. 

He went solo to the wrestling match while I stayed at the hotel and got pampered with a spa date. Hard life, right? He had a blast and told me all about it..he sounded like a lil kid because he was SO excited about the entire thing since his favorite wrestler was actually there. In fact, here's a picture that he accidentally took of himself last time...he looks totally enamored:

Annnnd here's a picture of his favorite wrestler, Rob Van Dam:

Due to him having such a fantastic time at the match in London, I decided to snag some tickets for us to check 'em out in Brussels since that's only an hour away from here. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for heading back to London since I love it there..but we're both all busted up between his back problems and my knee being out of whack. It's for the best that we didn't trek all over the place like last year. I don't think either of us would've survived, lol. 

So, we headed out last night with some time to spare since we knew we'd hit some sort of traffic because, hey, that's how Brussels is. Unbeknownst to us, we didn't realize how cluttered Brussels downtown actually got. Then again, neither of us have ever experienced that city via car...we've always taken the train. It all become crystal clear why we always took the train, lol. My TomTom said we were only fifteen minutes away from the arena, but we were stuck in traffic for forty stressful minutes. Why was it stressful? Well, taxi drivers in that city apparently have no morals, ethics, or souls..they cut people off when there wasn't any room to begin with, almost caused multiple accidents and we have several close calls. Oh, by the way..we were in my Xterra which isn't very common here. With that being said, people had a knack of staring at the vehicle rather than the road, which caused a little more of an issue when it came to moving along. 

By the time we arrived at Vorst Nationaal, we were a little late for the start of the show due to the traffic AND since we had to park a kilometer away (that's all that was available for parking). But, it's all good since we didn't have to wait in a huge line to get in the door. In fact, we were able to walk right in, get our tickets scanned and off we went to find our seats. When we walked into the seating area, this is the first thing we saw:

The camera makes it look so far away, but we were actually pretty close to the ring! Plus, the arena wasn't packed at all, so we got to sit wherever we wanted unlike when Eric went to London (he said it was absolutely PACKED there). When the wrestlers were in the ring, you could hear them clearly (no microphones) and you weren't straining to figure out what they were doing. 

The first match we got to watch was Douglas Williams verses Gunner. When you watch these guys on TV, they look absolutely massive. I mean, they're big dudes when you see them in person..but Gunner didn't look AS buff, lol. 

The match was pretty interesting....in the end, Gunner ended up winning and the Belgians DID NOT like him at all! They were boo'ing and yelling at him. When he was exiting the ring, he was flipping everyone off. Niiiice! Then Douglas Williams waved to the crowd and thanked them for coming to the event, everyone was cheering and rooting for him. At least they were nice to him :) 

The next match was with Samoa Joe verses Crimson. Eric was rootin' for Joe while I was going for the "big ginger", as he lovingly refers to Crimson. 

After a variety of chop slaps, slams, kicks and all sorts of other technical stuff I know nothing about, MY guy won! HAHA!! Of course, Samoa Joe was a sore loser and had a bit of a hissy fit..attacked Crimson and screamed at fans. Ya know, kept his cool:

Then there was a match with the "Knockouts" which is with the female wrestlers. Honestly, I didn't watch the majority of the match since I was trying to fix Eric's camera and clear some of it's memory. Perfect time to do that, right? He had a ton of pictures on there he never removed (I'm talking a year and a half worth of pictures)..so, lots of deleting took place. Turns out, two of the female wrestlers I liked, which is Tara and Mickie James, won their tag team match against Madison Rain and some other chick. 

One of the next performers was actually from Georgia, and not too far from where Eric grew up. AJ Styles! 

AJ ended up wrestling against a guy named Bully Ray. 

To be honest, Bully Ray was so gross. Given, I understand these guys have a character to play, but some of the things this guy did was absolutely repulsive. He'd hock a loogie into the air and try to catch it (or it'd spatter into the crowd), or he'd spit out the side of the ring which looked like it went into the crowd. Just...GROSS. So, I was VERY happy when AJ ended up winning the match. The Belgians REALLY did NOT like Bully Ray..AT ALL! They kept screaming "YOU SUCK! YOU SUCK!". It was pretty hilarious considering they all had really thick French / Dutch accents while shouting that at him. 

Then there was the "main event", which was a three man match. It was with Kurt Angle, James Storm and Bobby Roode. If Kurt sounds familiar to you, it's because he won a gold metal in the Olympics back in 1996. 

Lots of slaps, throws, slams, and a "Double DDT"...

All three guys got knocked out for a lil bits..

After several minutes of high flying stunts, Angle and Storm ended up losing the match to Roode, but they still celebrated with some bottles of Duvel which is a fabulous beer to get drunk off of.

Beer showers! 

They LOVED Angle! 

Angle and Storm were thanking the crowd for coming to the event, which made the fans go nuts even more. THEN, Storm grabbed the Belgian flag from a fan and was waving it around the ring. They fans went bonkers, chanting his name and really got excited! 

Honestly, I was amazed with some of the stuff these guys did, the hits they took (although some were fake, some weren't) and the fans were absolutely hilarious. When you hear Belgians (with their accent) screaming some of the wrestlers names (sounds NOTHING like it) and throws insults at the bad guys in Dutch..it sounds like a comedy skit. Eric was entertained by not only the wrestlers, but apparently by some of my facial reactions to some of the stuff that was going on, lol. 

All in all, this is what I really cared about:

My husband had a great time! Despite the traffic and dealing with being late, he still had a blast, had a chance to get loud and rowdy with the rest of the fans and watch some good ol' wrestlin'! 

Hopefully we'll still be here around this time next year since TNA announced at the match that they'd be returning to Brussels again :) *fingers crossed*

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