Early birthday celebration

It was to be my cousin Brigitte’s birthday on Monday 23 September. As we were only in town until the 22nd, Brigitte kindly arranged an early celebration with the family. We got to see Nathalie, Ahmet and Sohan, Gui, Geertje and Lisa, and Stefan and his daughter Emma, as well as Paulette. The only one we didn’t see is Rob, maybe next time. It was a lovely late afternoon with blue sky and sunshine, and a temperature of 27C, and so we had dinner in the backyard, which was lovely. Brigitte had arranged a barbecue that Stefan cooked, and which was delicious. Nathalie made a chocolate cake with cream and homemade blackberry jam, which was delicious also. It was great to catch up with the family even for such a short time.

Gui drove us back to Stockel to catch the metro back into town. When we arrived we found some roads blocked, and police around many intersections. We thought it might be in preparation for “no cars day” in Brussels the following day, but we were wrong. When we arrived at Galerie de la Reine, we found that the centre of the Galerie was cordoned off and there were police at the start of the cordoned off area.

As we walked towards our apartment entrance, we turned around to see runners heading down the cordoned off area - hundreds and hundreds of runners. They all had on head lights, and they were participating in the Brussels Night Run. It starts at 9.45pm at the Place de la Bourse, and also finishes there. It is the third year the race has been run and participants run an 8km course around Brussels. We watched and cheered on the runners for a while before heading upstairs. There must have been thousands of competitors, as many more runners ran through after we got upstairs, and we had a great vantage point to watch them all go through the Galerie.Read more