Cafés in Liège

Café Coin, the café opposite the hotel with the breakfast offer nice furnishings but not great coffee, the first evening café the brasserie next to the hotel, the second evening café with the great salads, the third evening café with the emptiness and the later evening with the dark Leffe (brun), fourth evening watching TV in the room as we'd been out all day up stairs to the hill-view, in the museum of Wallonian folk life (super and friendly staff), the gloomy but stately town house with the tapestries, the art gallery four floors truncated to two but enjoyable all the same landscapes histories Magritte (x 2).
Parks on the Sunday and spoke to Amnesty people on the stand in a community festival, not sure if we were in the Modern Art gallery or not.
Monday was Eupen a corner of Germany very near Germany east of Liège, cafés look German sell the same cakes and bread, one-language signposts, smartly restored buildings, café staff friendly again in two languages easily fluent.

Location:Belgium

The bravery of others - Ales Bialiatski, Belarus

Belarus in the former Soviet Union is a hard place to be if you believe in freedom of speech and the rights of individuals. Ales Bialiatski is a brave man who has spoken up against the Soviet régime and now the dictatorship of Alexander Lukashenko.
For information on Ales Bialiatski and details of where to send messages of support, go to the website of the Freedom for Ales Bialiatski movement, which is where the photo of Ales, below, comes from too.

Location:Belarus

Olympic triumphs

Watching Mo Farah win the 5,000 metres while we were in a pub in Stratford, two older local (white) men cheering him on "Come on Mo!"
This after a matinée performance of "Much Ado about Nothing" with Meera Syal and a British Asian cast in a setting in modern India. Superb performances and the relocation really worked.

Multicultural Britain is alive and working and the country's richer for it.


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Culture !

London: National Gallery for Veronese, Titian, up to Pisarro, Sisley - both have some beautiful Winter scenes - and some van Gogh, Cézanne ("
Big Bathers as Pete and Dud put it :)).

Impressionist light very welcome after a thoughtfully put together show of Titian scenes from Ovid Metamorphoses, in the dark basement of the Sainsbury Wing.

National Portrait Gallery: London 2012 portraits of athletes and others linked with the Olympics, not least the Head of Catering who's had the biggest peace time catering operation since WW2.

British Museum - Horses through the ages, from early chariot days and the reverse-shot specialists to modern thoroughbreds.
Saudi sponsorship, HMQ too :)

Such wonderful collections altogether, Sutton Hoo remains from Anglo-Saxon England, the Elgin marbles now called the Parthenon sculptures and still disputed ownership...!

No upfront payments for any of the above: I kept away from the blockbuster paying exhibitions of Shakespeare or British writers at the BM or BL, excellent though I'm sure these are.

Location:Out and about around

Stratford

Some photos of Anne Hathaway's Cottage and gardens.
Interesting to hear about Shakespeare becoming a property owner and comfortable materially in his own lifetime. Also, how hard he worked to achieve success in the theatre after he started in London.

Oxford in the Sun

College Garden (Balliol) and a cat :-)

Oxford encore une fois :-)

Another trip to picturesque, historic Oxford on a sunny day for tourists and College gardens.
The Ashmolean has another enjoyable exhibition on, a little pricey but worth it, with paintings, documents, artefacts traced back to a ship returning with these items collected by English Grand Tourists (aristos and others abroad in Europe) in the 18th Century, when the ship was captured by the French and sent to Malaga.
The poor English never got their valuable paintings back, but patient research has brought together pictures (et al) for the exhibition.
Website at www.ashmolean.org .

There's another well-worth-a-visit exhibition on at the History of Science Museum on Broad Street, but I forgot and went to a couple of nice college gardens instead (Balliol and Trinity, Balliol smaller and cosier, a world away from the busy thoroughfare just outside).

King's Arms as ever a handy wood finished old English pub, at the end of Broad Street before Holywell Street, to sup a real ale or a refreshing cup of tea. Found Missing Bean coffee shop on Turl Street for a coffee-to-go on the way back.

Merci beaucoup à L. pour avoir eu du temps pour bavarder et boire un verre l'après-midi :)

Location:Oxford !