Afternoon expeditions and Weekend trips

It is great to be able to spend your afternoon in France or your weekend in Berlin, on a whim.

I had an afternoon to spend near Paris, but little interest in actually being in Paris. Chantilly is a beautiful chateau about half an hour away.

Dan Moren and I spent a day in Stratford-upon-Avon. Shown here is the river, and the cottage of Shakespeare's wife, Anne Hathaway.

Yet another weekend with Dan, this time in Munich, Germany. We were a little disorganized about this trip and the weather didn't help, but we enjoyed it. Munich has the Deutsche Musem, the most fascinating science and technology museums I've ever seen. We needed a day to appreciate it; we had two hours. We spent some time wandering around the city, toured the Nymphenberg palace (right), and visited the concentration camp at Dachau.

When a former girlfriend sends you email saying she's in the UK, and proposes that you meet up for a weekend, where do you go? Brussels, apparently, because it's easily accessible by train from both sides of the Channel, and it's not Paris. I'd only been to Brussels once before, for six hours, so it sounded good to me. Even better, (and completely coincidentally), we were there for Belgian Independence day, meaning that there were fireworks and many free events. Here is the cathedral in Brussels, and one side of the main square.