A note on train travel: the trains we rode in Europe are quieter than cars, so you don't need to talk as loudly to be heard. Also, since you're riding with other passengers, you don't want to speak more loudly than necessary to be heard by your travelling companions because you don't want to disrupt anyone else's train of thought. If you're me, that is. I spent a lot of time on our Grand Tour asking our other team members to get their voices down.
We arrived in Brussels at 9:52, paid 10€ for luggage lockers that all of our 2 suitcases and several backpacks fit in, found a taxi van that could take the 5 of us to the Museum of Fine Arts that W. H. Auden wrote of in his 1938 poem "Musée des Beaux Arts." The taxi cost us 30€ , which seemed expensive to me, but the taxi driver insisted that this was the fixed price for train station taxis, so we took it.
The Museum of Fine was virtually ours. At the entrance to the galleries there was a "Bruegel box," featuring a series of three introductory films that were projected onto the three walls of the room: one about Bosch and two others about Bruegel. The effect was to make you feel that you are immersed in the painting, and small parts of the painting are illuminated and described. It was a great way to introduce these artworks. Some of the Bruegel box can be glimpsed in these short promotional videos.
When we'd had an eyeful, we stopped for lunch in the museum cafe. Museum cafes are overpriced worldwide, I know. But the menus are often interesting and the convenience is sometimes worth the added expense, especially if the museum is large, and you could benefit from a break. At the Brussels Museum, I had warm green soup in a clear glass, Emi had a fruit cup and a petit pan, Nina and Pablo had pommes frites, and Mari has quinoa salad. Nina also had a chocolate muffin.
One of the post-snack highlights of the museum for me was the "Death of Marat" (1793), by Jacques-Louis David.
The Museum of Fine Arts is next door to a modest Magritte museum, which we visited as well. I took several photos there, but it was a dark museum and none of the photos featured my family members, so I'm not posting those photos here.
The taxi I hailed on the street only charged 10€ to take us back to the station.
The 2:45 train we boarded for Den Haag was half empty. Though our Eurail passes were good for first class, we didn't realize that at the time.
We arrived in Den Haag at 5:22 p.m. and had some difficulty figuring out how we were going to get to the house of Mari's cousin Pauli. First of all, we couldn't find the taxi stand. We considered boarding a tranvia, but weren't sure we'd know which stop to get off at or how we'd pay for our tickets. We considered taking an Uber before Mari eventually found a taxi that was willing to take all five of us to the address we provided him.
We hadn't seem Pauli since we visited Ecuador together the year that Mari and I started dating. That was 26 years ago! Back then, Pauli was a child, younger than Nina and Pablo are now. Now she and her husband Artur--who is from Poland and works for the European Union's Patent Office--live in a beautiful 3-story house that are renting from an architect who helped remodel it. Most of the rooms seemed ready for a photo shoot.
Pauli and Artur both welcomed us with open arms and proved to be an ideal, encouraging audience for the impromptu magic/talent show that our kids performed after a delicious dinner of broccoli, miso soup, bread with cheese and tomatoes, and tartelette desserts.
