Prowling my world, camera in hand

A typical week: mostly in Alicante, but also a couple of days in Brussels. This is a great time of the year to visit northern Europe: the days are long, really long, and the temperatures mostly pleasant, and a welcome relief from the Alicante heat.

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But first a snap of the choir of parents from the European School in Alicante, from which our daughter graduated two years ago. Even though we have no children in the school anymore, my wife remains active in the choir. They sing at small concerts, and most often in churches like here, during a mass for the sick:

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On Wednesday I flew to Brussels, and while walking from Schuman to my hotel, I noticed this sign in a window on Rue Froissart. This is typical Brussels, a city where EU and international politics play a big role. In much of the rest of Europe (and the US, I’m sure) most people have no idea what TTIP stands for:

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On Thursday my meetings ended around 4 p.m., and by happy coincidence, that day many of Brussels’s museums and galleries were open late, including one of my favourites, Bozar (the name is a play on the French beaux arts):

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There was a large exhibition (in both senses of the word) of some contemporary Belgian photography:

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But I had gone there to see an exhibition of feminist art from the 1970s and 1980s, much of which frankly left me cold. So I hung around a bit and shot some pictures of the other visitors instead:

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One of the joys of walking around Brussels is that even when I am on streets which I have walked many times before, I always discover something I have not seen before, such as the entrance hall to an insurance company building near the Gare Centrale:

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And here is a shopping centre that is actually beautiful, Galerie Ravenstein:

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Some of the bloodiest fighting during World War I took place in Belgium, and small memorials like this one are scattered around Brussels and other Belgian cities. This one is right next to the Mérode metro station:

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Thursday night I visited my cousin Nicole, here preparing our dinner. It is nice to have a second home in Brussels, just 15 minutes walk (or one stop by metro if it rains) from my hotel:

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When walking back to my hotel, I could not resist the evening light in the Parc Cinquantennaire:

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Back at my hotel, I watched most of the second half of the England-Uruguay World Cup match. England lost 2-1 and was eliminated from the World Cup, to the chagrin of the many English fans in the bar. In this image, Luis Suarez (who plays in Liverpool FC, ironically) has just scored the winning goal for Uruguay:

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On Friday morning I checked out of my hotel and walked to the European Commission’s Directorate for the Internal Market to meet with some people there before flying home. On the way, I passed these statues on the wall of the main Commission building. I have photographed them before, but I continue to be fascinated by them and so I always look for the better angle and nicer light:

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A different kind of “graffiti” on Rue de la Loi:

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On Saturday, I was back home and cycling in the hills. I stopped to take this picture of a disconnect between the sign and the actual conditions:

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The main square (actually, the only square) in Aigües was largely deserted except for this boy who was practicing his skateboarding. He kept going round and round the base of this lamp post; I got dizzy just looking at him:

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But he could skate in a straight line too:

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Alicante has not had any rain to speak of for several months. The winter was much drier than usual, and the water level in this reservoir reflects that: