I know I ended the last post by hoping for more sunny days but I didn’t expect this. For the first time ever, a July in Belgium felt like a July in Croatia! Window shutters down for most of the day and that dry unbearable heat outside. I can’t say I missed those kinds of summers even though I grew up with them, but it wasn’t a bad change. I mean, so far I’ve only had rainy birthdays here in Belgium! The month started with a quiet walk in the woods. And even though it was midday, we saw a deer! He was just a few meters away from us and surprisingly, wasn’t scared by our presence. Moments like these make me wish we had a telephoto lens! On our way back home, we stopped by La Charmille which was vibrantly green.
Midway through the month, I finally got to see The National perform live and it was perfect! It was during a one-day festival called TW Classic and I felt lucky to finally be able to see them because I never had luck getting tickets to their concerts. A few days later we went out and Grégory took photos of me during the golden hour. I don’t know why but I rarely take photos during sunsets anymore. This set of photos definitely had me wondering why because the light was beautiful! I was quite satisfied with the end results of this random sunset photoshoot.
After much postponing, I finally decided to visit Mechelen, a small city situated only 30 minutes away from Brussels. And again, I have no idea why I was postponing this because I loved it! The city is rather small so I practically saw everything on my list during those five hours. It looks like a smaller version of Ghent, with its unique Flemish architecture and charming canals. And you can read more about it next week in a separate blog post!
The day before my birthday, we visited Pairi Daiza, the biggest zoo in Belgium. Also, the most popular zoo because they not only have two giant pandas but a cute baby panda as well! Okay, he’s not that much of a baby anymore but he’s ridiculously cute! We kept coming back to check up on him and see what he was up to, besides being adorable. We first visited this place three years ago and it was nice to revisit it. But in total, walking around the zoo amounted to 13km on a +30° kind of day so we were exhausted by the end of it.
Grégory took two days off work to spend my birthday with me so we enjoyed a raspberry and blueberry pie for breakfast. I still have yet to taste a better pie than these Tancrémont pies! We also spent a big portion of the long weekend hiking before the heat would set in. Last year we acquired a map of hiking trails around our home and since then we’ve been slowly exploring them. But lately, it crept into our weekly routine and I’m loving it. All in all, it was a pretty eventful July, despite the constant heat and I’m looking forward to seeing what August brings!
