And there's something else at the church that is really interesting: the Calvary Garden. Leo says this is one of two in the world and was created by two of the Dominican friars in about 1698, as a surrogate for taking a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, travel to which was impossible at that time. It's got all the iconography of Christ's path to the cross, including the rooster, Saracens with turbans, angels, tormented souls in Hell, and more. Quite the Holy Land Christian travelog. The wheelbarrow is from the workers who were planting bushes along a fence to the right.
These are the guys planting the bushes. Note the really bright gear they are wearing. This is typical of all the workers I've seen on the streets of Belgium. It's really hard to miss them, which is really practical given the mad traffic in these old cities with narrow streets. I'm thinking it would be great if workers in the US had the same sort of gear; I think they'd be safer, because it's really hard to miss these neon-bright outfits.
After we left the church, I looked up to see this perfectly Rubens sky and had to take a picture.
And here are the Nancys after we left the church, once again trying to figure out what direction we should be heading. It's difficult on these little streets that are short, narrow and change names frequently!
After St Paul's, it took us awhile to get back to the Central Station, and it took the help of several people who took pity on us tourists. The clue was probably that we looked like an advertisement for Wrong Way Corrigan, each of us pointing in a different direction.
We went through the shopping district close to the station. With the lights it was a pretty sight .
Once we finally found the station, we were happy to see that the locker in which we'd left our luggage had continued to behave itself and we successfully retrieved our chattles. We bought train tickets for Brussels and boarded the train with no problems. The trip was about an hour and we were able to decode enough of the train announcements in French that we got off at the right stop.
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