The Lion of Waterloo cuddling with a rooster. The symbol of Flanders is the Lion, and the symbol of Wallonia is the Rooster. So a nice touchy-feely "Can't we all just get along" sculpture. And underneath that some statue whose head is falling off.....

Beachcombing on the beach in Blankenberge

A "Typische Belgian" and a typische Belgian house :)

Smurfette, known to the French Belgians as "Schtroumpfette." The Smurfs were created by a Belgian cartoonist named Peyo in 1958 as part of another comic strip

A stylized Iguanadon; some belgian miners found a very complete skeleton...

The "cat of Ieper," the village that has a "Cat parade/festival" every 3 years to honor the cats that helped kill the rodents in the town during the plague or something.

Here's King Albert II and his wifew on his motorcycle

Images from the summer Sand Sculpture display in Blankenberge. We were there 4 days before the end of the run, so some of the statues had sort of fallen apart, but it was still neat. The theme this year was "the Best of Belgium"or something, to commemorate the 175/25 anniversary. This is the Atomium in Brussels.

****These images are a lot cooler if you click on them and have them open up to a larger size in another window. You can see the detail a lot better*************

This is the hi-tech transport of the Neeuwport "Muskrat suppression" task force....no bigger problem...

the narrowest hallway EVER in our hotel.

My souvenier, een Paraplu ..een heel mooi paraplu (very beautiful umbrella)

Sarah Ann's surprise birthday present, tickets to see Cirque du Soleil's Dralion. As always, very impressive. Dralion = Dragon (Asia) + Lion (Africa). Neat mixture. Sue loves her mask :)

Shell hunting in front of the casino in Oostende. SA had never seen a sand dollar before. The ones we were finding were like 1-2 cm wide, teeny, but it was fun looking for them..

I swear, the weirdest clouds i've ever seen!!

Wednesday, Aug. 24th. Sarah Ann and I go to Oostende on the Belgium coast. We took a sea cruise along the coast south to Neeuwpoort. We paid for the round-trip but in all honesty it was kinda boring, although it was a nice first look at how incredibly built-up every km of coastline is (Hey, they only have like 50 of them....)

Sunday brought with it the Druivenstoet (Grape Parade). These were the "Giants of Overijse"

Sunday, Aug. 21. Sarah Ann and I go to the Druivenfeesten in Overijse. (Druiven = grapes). The area south of Brussels in Overijse (pronounced "o'-ver'-eye-zah") and Hoeliaart (basically "Hoo-ey'-laaarrrt") are renowned for their glass greenhouses in which they grow their grapes. It was a much bigger industry in the past, now a lot of the greenhouses have been torn down or fallen into disrepair, but the growers still take a lot of pride. The grapes in this picture were almost as big as plums, no joke....if only they could figure out how to make them seedless.....

The weather wasn't great, but we still had a great time.

Saturday, Aug. 20: Mike and I travel about 2 hours southwest into Wallonia to a tiny village of about 200 people, Chassepierre. This village hosts a festival of Street Performance Artists every year and it draws over 30,000 people! The village would actually prefer less people, actually, but they sort of throw up their hands. Apparently the artists are different each and every year. There were stilt walkers, jugglers, acrobats, dancers, comedians, and weird people who dress up and act like lizards, and much much more! Mike thought I was nuts, and the whole time we were driving down there he was thinking "we're going to get to this thing and it's going to be like 3 guys juggling bean bags...." He was pleasantly surprised. And the village was sooooo charming!

My lovely friend Sarah Ann again :)