Saturday, November 29, 2014

Thursday, November 20, 2014

Esch-sur-Sûre Again


My mom and I made a quick day-trip back to Esch-sur-Sûre the other day.  You may remember it from our mini-Luxembourg-castle-tour of Summer 2013.
Esch-sur-Sûre
It's just a tiny ruin on a couple of hills in a picturesque little village.  You can see there are two parts: a round part on the left and a rectangle part on the right.  These are highly technical terms you needn't trouble yourself with.

Back on that late summer day, this was the very last castle we visited, so we didn't take much time there.  This year, we scaled that puppy!  Round part first!
up the first side of the hill


looking down from the round part onto the village and the rectangle part

looking behind us onto this statue
mystical
then back down, and up through the town to the rectangle part (when the sun came out, and it got less mystical but still lovely)

looking back at the round part
flying the Lux flag
I still really like this one upon second viewing.  So peaceful.

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Brothers in Belgium


Pete's younger brother, Jon, is touring in Kina Grannis' band.  He invited Pete to come play trombone on a couple of songs when they played a show in Antwerp on Tuesday night.

It's about 2.5 hours away
So Pete took a half-day from work, my mom watched the kids, and we drove up to Antwerp for the evening.  We found the venue and the band, and then took a brief walk around the immediate area before the sun set.
some sort of botanical garden across from venue

Antwerp feels very Dutch.  Confession: we kind of thought it was actually Dutch before this.  But it's Belgian.
sun's almost gone
Jon is sort of the musical director for this tour and put much of the band and crew together (hence his authority to work in his brother from Luxembourg on trombone for one night - which would otherwise be kinda weird, I'd say.)
going over his part
dinner with the band
a little city-walking in the dark
National Bank Van Belgie
Show time!
Jon on keys/bass/Macbook-geeky-music-running-stuff-I-don't-understand
Pete and Jon were trying to remember the times they played shows together over the years. The answer was almost none; they are four years apart, so were never in really in the same school or band.

Except, ya know, in Antwerp.

To be filed under "life is weird" for sure!


Here's a clip (you may need to click through to the blog if you're reading this in email).