Sunday 28th August - Sunrise 6:51am –
Sunset 8:36pm
Weather Forecast: 25c partly cloudy
Steps: 11,397 7.86 kl.
About our TD and driver. Sharon Tooman
is our TD and our driver is Jan (pronounced as Yarn) and he is from Belgium.
Sharon is originally from New Zealand. She used to work in the medical field as
a Hematologist but came to Europe 22 years ago for a short while and hasn’t
managed to move back to NZ. She was first involved with Contiki Tours but has
been working for Insight for the past 16 years. She was saying that she lived
in the UK for about 10 years but now lives in the south of France.
Today’s adventures.
Another early morning for me and I
was down for breakfast at 6:45am. The
breakfast spread in this hotel is very good.
Our excursion today, took us to the
Waterloo Battlefield site of June 1815, where the 2 armies of the Seventh
Coalition, an Anglo led Allied army under the command of the Duke of Wellington
and a Prussion army under the command of the Prince of Wahlstatt, Gebhard
Leberecht von Blucher, defeated the French Army, under the command of Napolean
Bonaparte.
Last year was the 200th
anniversary of the battle and the museum opened a new display and exhibition
about the battle and a 4D movie, which was excellent. Actually, the whole
museum and presentation was very well done.
I managed to climb the 226 steps up
to the top of the Lions Mound.
The view of the surrounding countryside was
impressive, although very windy up on the top.
There was a short re-enactment which
I missed seeing, as I was up on top of the mound and the re-enactment was on
the other side of the Panorama building there.
From there we returned to Brussels.
We found a place to buy something for lunch and then walked back to the hotel.
The optional to Antwerp departed at
1pm. I visited Antwerp in August 2015, so gave that a miss. Instead, I had a
quiet afternoon, catching up on some reading.
When the group returned at 5:30pm,
Cindy and I then went for a walk, to see the Royal Palace.
The Royal Palace of Belgium is one of the
most beautiful official buildings in the capital, Brussels.
Standing opposite the Parliament building on
the other side of the Royal Park, the Royal Palace symbolises our system of
government, that is to say, a constitutional monarchy.
The Palace is the place where His Majesty the
King exercises his prerogatives as Head of State. It is at the Palace that the
King grants audiences and deals with affairs of state.
Apart from housing the offices of the King
and the Queen, the Royal Palace also accommodates the services of the Chief of
Cabinet to the King, the Intendant of the Civil List of the King,
the Chief of the Military Household of the King , the Chief of
Protocol of the Court, the Head of the Foreign Relations Department and
the Head of the Petitions and Social Affairs Department .
The Palace also includes the State Rooms where
large receptions are held, as well as the apartments provided for foreign Heads
of State during official visits
On the way back to the hotel, I
called into a small store in a small street and managed to buy some postage
stamps. It’s very hard to find places that sell them here in Brussels. We
called into the
same place to grab a bite to eat for
dinner and then continued back to the hotel.
We are departing from Brussels
tomorrow, so I’m having an early night tonight .
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