Second day with Eleanor

Tuesday June 23rd Another lovely fine day! First stop: Palais de Justice, what a massive building with interesting brick-filled pillars. Trapped - a young couple who’d parked too closely behind another car, someone else parked too closely behind them! They tried many manoeuvres to try to get out again, but had to give up! Unfortunately we couldn't push the front car forward either, so they left, good-naturedly, to do some more shopping, hoping that one of the other drivers would return before they got back.









The Musical Instrument Museum is a fascinating place with over 7,000 instruments from all over the world. There are some weird hybrids, e.g. a trombone with 7 bells, a harpsichord/monochord - which looked like someone had tried to jam a one-stringed cello into it, a piano/harp etc. There were some rather odd folk instruments too, like a violin having a covered fingerboard with large metal keys near the base. Videos showing how they are played would be good! Pictured: clavier d’archets, rectangular virginal, hexagonal piano.









On the way back to Grand-Place we passed through this lovely garden (above), before lunching on sandwiches and crispy Belgian waffles at a street table.
The Brussels City Museum contains art works & tapestries dating from the Middle Ages as well as various displays about the history of the city. My favourite: a mediaeval 3-D altar screen on ‘The Life of Christ and of the Virgin” - incredible delicacy of detail.

We took a photo of the city (left) from the top of the tallest car park building before walking to the Place de Palais. Eleanor rested in the gardens, while we visited the remains of the 12th century Coudenberg Palace, buried in 1700 under a market place! Seeing the collapsed ballroom floor (above) & hearing the traffic passing overhead was a bit nerve-wracking. The Rue d’Isabelle (left) used to be above ground, leading to the old market.
After meeting back up again, Bruce & I went to the Atomium (right), whilst Eleanor went to meet boyfriend Ben. We arrived back at St Catherine’s (left) much later than planned: the metro took longer to get to the Atomium than anticipated, we had further to walk due to road works, then to return we left from a different metro station which happened to be further away than it looked on the map + a vital road sign was missing! We also waited 20 minutes to get a train, missed the 1st as it had a different number/route on the front, but found out later it would have done!
We ate traditional Belgian cuisine together, nice but a bit dear + small portions. It was interesting hearing how Eleanor & Ben first met, & that she’s staying with his parents, & the cats she house-sat recently are his sister’s!
A mystery accident near our table: a policeman arrived accompanied by sirens to interview a motorcyclist partly obscured by pavement hoardings. An ambulance arrived
next & took someone away on a stretcher - but we didn't see what had happened.
Before saying our goodbyes at the metro, we went for a little walk in the dusk to visit a famous shopping street – oh dear, rubbish day tomorrow! Someone was a bit camera-shy!