Oh, and "boulevard" means "avenue" and vice versa. Crazy!

I went north and west of the city center on Tuesday, an area seemingly indifferent to the tourism trade. There were some great-looking shops and other sites, including a large variety store that appeared to sell everything from clothes to housewares to industrial meat slicers as well as hoagies and a building labeled something like "Pest Elimination School". I went by the slaughterhouse, which to my surprise is actually still a slaughterhouse. I had no idea, given the complete lack of offensive odors. From a quick web perusal, it looks like they had to go modern to get approval of the European Commission to export, and this was followed by a fire 9 years ago which resulted in more modernization. I visited the canal, Brussels' only waterway since they enclosed their river for the purposes of sewage conveyance. It was tiny, with space for just two boats to pass with only inches between them. Two abreast (one named "I Love You" in English) were passing through a lock as I went by, and the one kept bumping the other and the wall of the canal as it exited.

There's tons of places around that bear further exploration, including the building across the street from the John the Baptist Church that had not coats of arms on it but coats of hairstyles throughout history. They started with the hairstyles of the ancient Greek goddesses and went right up through the 1920s, with dates included where appropriate (no dates were given for the goddesses' hairstyles, because, let's face it, they're timeless). (There were no hairstyles given for the first 1600 years of the Common Era--this was known as the Dark Ages for hair salons everywhere.) Not sure what happened after the Roaring '20s, whether hair styling became so uncomplicated that it wasn't worth discussing ("Le Bob - 1930" just doesn't have the same cachet) or they ran out of space on the wall. The building looked like it was gutted inside, so hopefully they're remodeling it rather than tearing it down. Across the street was a piece of the city wall and turret that had been uncovered in the 1950s, which is surrounded on 3 sides by a much taller building. I can just see Rapunzel leaning out her window to see if she can spot Prince Charming's imminent rescue, when he calls out to her from 10 stories above in his bachelor pad with a hottie on each arm: "Up here, baby! Bring some Courvoisier when you get out!"

--s

I went to work all day and sat at a desk.

--Jack