Thursday 21 February 2013

Back to Belgium, and Thursdays, sixes and sevens.


Chateau du Lac, Genval, Belgium

So, our Thursday night schedule for 2013 is "all to pot".  Last Thursday (number 6 of the year), landed on Valentine's day, so that clearly needed to be reserved for individual plans, and this Thursday (the 7th of the year) has been rescheduled to tomorrow - a real case of "sixes and sevens"! This week's disruption was my fault again, because I had another work trip to Belgium at short notice, and just got back this afternoon.  I was worried that I'd fall asleep at the dinner table!  I'll report on the culinary delights of tomorrow in due course.

Given the trip to Belgium, and the fact that my return flight didn't leave before 7am this time (!), I was able to pick up some fresh cream Neumann chocolates at the airport - yum!  I stayed at the Chateau du Lac in Genval, a quiet little village on the outskirts of Brussels.  It was rather a deja vu, as I had been there about 10 years ago...still quite charming, and we were treated to some wintery sunshine and so it was nice to have the chance to walk around the lake before meetings started.  I had a bit of a confused history lesson from my taxi driver (could have been the jet lag!), and was amazed to discover from some Googling back home, that whilst the "Chateau" was originally built as a spa, it spent a good chunk of the twentieth century as a manufacturing plant for Schweppes, producing India Tonic Water, and was only converted back to a hotel and spa in the eighties.  If only I had known, I would surely have had a gin and tonic to celebrate the illustrious past!


Le Lac de Genval

Blue skies, in February, in Belgium!

On first glance, I thought there was truly a stork on the roof of this boathouse. 


Beautiful waterfront homes in Genval

I finished reading "Great Expectations" on this trip, and this house, which was clearly once very beautiful indeed, with some very unique features (like decorative brick dove cots built into the chimneys), reminded me of "Satis House", Miss Havisham's decaying estate.  With it's lakeside location and very large garden, this looks like a perfect restoration project for someone with nice deep pockets!

1 comment:

  1. Thank you for a lovely picture tour, and I am glad you had a good time.

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