MY WEEKEND OF NOVEMBER 22

Now that my cold is over I feel like a tiger whose cage had been opened ! The weather was sunny but cold, and I decided to go first to the Anderlecht market


photo from internet

and then I wanted to see the huge Christmas tree, which had been erected on the Grand'Place during the night.



Ever since I have my Toyota Hybrid car I love to drive in the city and don't mind traffic jams at all, my car runs for free in electric mode when I drive under 60 km/h (37 miles) and only switches automatically to petrol when I drive faster and it is so silent that you can hardly hear the motor and only when I am in petrol mode. I made my tour on the market, bought fruits and then asked my GPS to guide me to the Grand'Place ! In short I never arrived because there had been an accident in Brussels and the whole city center was blocked. So I did a great sightseeing tour through areas in Brussels where I had never been.

As my friend's daughter from the South of France will come to Brussels in January to continue her studies with the European student exchange, she had asked me about a municipality in Brussels to look for a room to rent.

I took the opportunity and drove there and discovered a very nice area I had never seen !





The street where the room was for rent, looked very pleasant, I saw a lot of young people, restaurants and cafés.

In the afternoon while Mr. G. was scotched on the TV screen for his Formular 1 I did a second attempt to see the new Christmas tree !



This time I arrived without any problems, parked my car in a car parking and walked over to the Grand'Place. It was packed with tourists and people ! Apparently I hadn't been the only one to have this idea. I watched for a while how they decorated the tree, and built the crip, but I will write about this in another post. Around the place Christmas decorations were already hanging over the streets. Next weekend the Christmas market will start.



For the Waterloo retirement home in which we have our painting classes, the manager had asked me if I could make a Christmas Card. I was quite pleased that he had asked me, I had already done the poster for our exhibition. Now I will see if he likes one of my projects or if he prefers a painted version.

I am also thinking about the approaching Christmas and gifts to buy. Only a few years ago I did that with pleasure and it was fun to choose gifts of which I hoped they would please. Now, I can't choose anymore I get a list, everybody has everything and don't want to have things in double or triple ! Christmas shopping has become a burden, a must because it is the use to offer something for Christmas and I refuse to put envelopes under the tree !