Happy March

Hello world, welcome to March. 

Last Saturday was really fun.  I went to the Museum Night Fever.  There were 19 museums open, and I went to 3 - first, the Wiertz Museum about the painter Antoine Wiertz.  It was really interesting because they had tour guides around and on their name tags they had little country flags representing the languages that they spoke.  So, I just had to find a little British flag and I did!  It was a girl who is studying art at university and she told lots of stories about his paintings and stuff.  It was really cool.

I just realized that my nails are too long to type comfortably.  One moment please.

Alright that's better.

Before I get to explaining about the other 2 museums, I should mention how organized the whole night was!  Well, Brussels is a relatively big city so to get to the museums, the city had 3 bus lines set up organized by colour.  There was a red line, a green line and a yellow line.  Each line had multiple busses going at once.  Then, at each bus stop, they had volunteers wearing t-shirts with the museum night logo on it, helping people get to the museums around them and answering questions.  I thought this was a really nice touch - better than signs with arrows.  All of the museums had guides in them with the same t-shirts and you could ask them to explain whatever it was in the museum.  Back to the organization aspect, all of the busses came together in the square just next to the Royal Palace.  To avoid confusion, bunches of coloured balloons were set up in front of where the corresponding bus had its stop.  For example, a bunch of red balloons were on the sidewalk just next to where the red bus would stop.  It was very well organized and helped the night run really smoothly!

The second museum was the Architecture museum.  Unfortunately, they didn't have any exhibitions on at the time.  The building itself, however, was an old free mason lodge so that was kind of cool.  The third museum was the Coudenberg Museum.  I'll go back there, because at the time there were WAY too many people.  This has the potential to be my favourite museum to date.  It is all underground in an extensive network of passageways, old streets (which have since been covered) and pathways.  It is really really cool!  They had people dressed up from back in the day who were walking around but I didn't get a chance to talk to them because once again there were sooooo many people there.  The story of how it got there is the most interesting part of it all.  This palace used to stand there:

It was really so impressive I would love to have seen it.  But in 1731 a fire destroyed it.  There are still parts left of it.  At one point it was leveled and built on top of.  Now, the area looks like this:

A very interesting detailed history can be found on the museum's website here.  I suggest reading it, it's worth while.  Then take a look at the pictures.  There was also a house just next to the palace, with a road between the two.  The video on that picture website is of the house.  The road is actually still there, but underground and you can walk down it.  It's hard to tell from the pictures, but it is really big underground.  I liked it a lot there and I hope to go back one day when it's not so hectic and hopefully I will be able to find someone willing to bring me around and explain things to me in more detail, or at least get my hands on an audio guide.

The afterparty seemed a little crazy and REALLY busy so I didn't go. 

Tomorrow I will be embarking on one of my day trip adventures again.  This time I will be going to Ghent.  It seems like quite the picturesque city so I'll be bringing my camera for sure!  I will be going with Will, one of my friends here in Brussels. 

Those are all of the updates for now!  Bye!