Alden Biesen, Belgium

A couple of weeks ago my parents came to visit us in Maastricht and it was, as always, delightful. It was during that weekend that my mum and I turned pretty much loom-crazy (have you heard of/seen/tried making these bracelets with small colourful elastics? well, they're pretty addictive and heaps of fun to make - anyway, more on that another time). Since my parents were here with their car (and we don't have one) we jumped on the opportunity to go on a little day-trip to some Belgian castles. The first stop of the day was in Alden Biesen, just over the border in Belgium. It's a truly spectacular place kept in beautiful shape. See for yourself!

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Les Ardennes (Belgium), at a train station.

Ghent, Belgium

 
A few weeks ago I spent a weekend in Belgium with some of my students. We had a lovely day in Ghent where we visited the Dr. Guislain Museum and had a walking tour through the beautiful city center. 

Bruges, Belgium | 3

And... that's it for Bruges! :-) Get ready for photos of our Berlin weekend though!

Bruges, Belgium | 2

A few more shots of this beautiful city.

Bruges, Belgium

A few photos from our weekend in Bruges... I took so many! It's such a pretty place, it was hard to control myself.

P.S. this new blogger interface is driving me nuuuuuts! Please someone tell me that it's possible to go back to the old one...?

Still here!

Hi everyone!
I haven't been here much lately; sorry!

It's been b-u-s-y in our neck of the woods! Mart became a doctor, his parents were here to visit, we went to Bruges (Belgium) for a weekend with them, just came back from Berlin (Germany) where we spent 4 days with his mum, work has been super duper busy... it all meant that I didn't have the time nor energy to get to blogging in the evening. 
:-)
And there's our wedding right around the corner which we should be planning, but there has been pretty much no time for that either lately. Must get to it. Soon.

Hmmm... and now that I'm finally logging in on blogger again, it seems like they've definitely forbidden me to use the very (very!) old platform I was so fond of... let's see if I can get used to this brand new and sleek-looking one! 

The insides of a hill

Today we cycled across the border and visited this fort. It's an impressive place; so very big, quite scary, and full of history.

Along the way

We stopped in Leuven on our way to the greenhouses the other day. We only had a short time in between trains, but it was just long enough to walk to the city center and see some pretty buildings.

The Royal Greenhouses

On Thursday we surprised my mum who was coming to visit us for the weekend by picking her up at the airport and taking her to the Royal Greenhouses of Laeken, together with my childhood friend Morgane who now lives in Brussels.


The flowers were beautiful and the whole place absolutely breathtaking. The greenhouses are only opened to the public for a few weeks every Spring, and so we were really happy to be part of the lucky few who got to see them this year!


More photos tomorrow.