Belgium!!

I'm in Belgium staying with a friend of mine (also called Alice). An early start of 4:45 was called for and so a long day of travel began.
The Eurostar was running on time but for some strange reason it couldn't go at full speed through the channel tunnel, this caused us to run 20 minutes late and further delays in Lille (someone hit the emergency door button and the system had to be reset). After finally arriving in Brussels at 10am rather than 9, I got a map from the information desk and began to walk towards the Musical Instrument Museum or MIM, it has an amazing collection of instruments from as early as 1700. Ranging from harpsichords to baby grand piano's, to the amazing collections of flutes, bagpipes; horns as well as violins and other rarer instruments.
It has three main galleries; Western traditional instruments, piano's and strings and World traditional instruments. The World traditional instruments start from Belgium and move through almost all the countries of the known world. they have specific areas of instruments from different regions of Asia as well as Europe. Most of the instruments are from 1700 and 1800 and have to be kept under low light as part of their conservation, hence not flash photography so some of my images are blurry due to the low exposure. The second room had what was deemed as Western traditional instruments, these included the violin, guitar and other stringed instruments as well as the development of the piano forte and violin from how it is constructed to how the way it was played hanged over the years. Considering it only costs €5 it was well worth it I highly recommend seeing it if you get the chance and find yourself with a few free hours in Brussels (because you will need a few hours).

After that I headed back to the train station and got a ticket to get to Mont-Saint-Guilbert. Where I met Alice at the connecting station Ottigines; we caught up as the train moved away from the platform and then walked up to her house. I was introduced to her mother and grand mother while she was making some wonderful apple tarts, as well as both her sisters and her brother later on in the evening. I met the two cats of the family and had one sleep on me while watching a movie. Her mum cooked an amazing meal of pork, potatoes and a pumpkin bake for dinner and we had our choice of the remaining tart, meringues and chocolate biscuits. I'm looking forward to seeing Louvain-la-Neuve as well as the Hergè Museum.