Midnight in Antwerp, on New Year's Eve

It just went crazy here at midnight, in that Belgian city where fireworks are illegal on New Year's Eve.  Just before midnight it sounded like a warzone.  19 minutes later and there are still explosions but it's no longer the ENTIRE city anymore.

Kids on the streets, neighbours too, some rain, and cloud cover.  Weather Underground tells me it's 7 celsius as I write this.

And so it is, 12 hours after New Zealand crossed over into 2014, we've arrived too.  Happy new year to you.  I'm posting a shot taken in New Zealand around this time last year.  The tree with the red flowers ... the NZ Christmas tree.  The Pohutakawa.  Cooks Beach.

Note: In Belgium, in general, it's only illegal if you're caught ... or that's what the locals tell me.

New Zealand in Antwerp

It seemed I only needed to roar a little and voila, the words came bubbling up afterwards.

I sent the advert text away before rushing out and across the city on the Thursday school pick-up.  It's a half-day, like Wednesday.  So now I just need to do the bio and locate some photographs of Genova.

But the happy news from today was that Miss 9 and I stopped for lunch at the new New Zealand shop located in the heart of Antwerp.  Pies ... Buzz bars, L&P, and etc.  We love it.

Miss 9 is a fairly radical vegetarian at the moment and so she chose the vegetarian pie which, to me, seemed like a very big waste of 'pie'.  I had the Stoofvlees pie ... a pie filled with the rather divine Flemish beef and beer stew.

L&P was our choice of drink.  Miss 9 because she finds it delicious and me because it takes me straight back to those childhood days where it was always summer.

Fortunately, before devouring too much pie, I remembered to stop for a photograph.  An imperfect image but I was far more interested in eating it.

Winter Blue ...

I posted, over on Facebook, that some friends in Genova will no longer believe me when I tell them I go there to escape the grey skies of Belgium.  Roberto and Doris flew in from Liguria on Monday, just as a high pressure weather system stalled over us.  They have enjoyed deep blue skies these last 3 days ...

We have had our first frosts here but a lot can be lived with if deep blue skies are involved.  I mentioned the fact that I had laundry drying on the clothes-line outside ... not completely drying but still, it was out and it was drying some, and she asked if I had photographed my lovely December clothes-line.

The thing is, once I pick up my camera, the difficulty is in putting it down again.  So rather than simply photograph sheets and duvet covers drying on my clothes-line outside, I wandered round our little pocket-sized garden.  I noticed the honeysuckle has been fooled into flowering again and that the raspberry leaves look rather divine in their autumn state. 

And so, a collage ...

Vapor Trails ...

I’m looking up and in the sky there is the shiny glint of a jet airplane caught in the sun’s grasp, pushing silently east; I’m thinking there are four hundred people going somewhere else. I’m hoping that most of them realise the freedom of being 38,000 feet up and headed somewhere new.

Anik See, from A Taste for Adventure

I've been noticing the vapor trails jets leave behind lately.  So many planes pass over Belgium on their way to someplace else. So many.

Last night, a sliver of a moon showed up early, the sky was blue but with a rose-tint, the one that appears in the sunset hours.  I pointed my camera up from my seat here by the window and took a series of photographs. 

I think I captured something of what was out there ...