Still Winter in Brussels!

A view of our Crowne Plaza Hotel after our day's outing. The hotel is the older building in beige in the center, dating from 1908. Its interior still maintains the Art Nouveau style throughout; the walls display mostly reproductions of Gustav Klimt. Very classy! It's a business district, which was mostly deserted this weekend (making the hotel a bargain :) The detail is fun to view large.

Note the empty period lamp in the middle distance--there is a whole series of them behind me along the wall on the right.

We were returning from a visit to the Musée des Beaux Arts, where we saw the old masters, following a marvelous special exhibition on "Kandinsky in Russia". Born in 1866, Kandinsky began painting around 1900, and the exhibition follows his development through 1922, focusing in fascinating detail on his Russian roots, with many paintings from Russian museums. We are great admirers of Kandinsky, and this was as good a show on him as we had ever seen.

A year ago we were in the middle of two weeks birding in the south of France (the Camargue).