A corona holiday: staying local

The whole corona thing is taking way too long. Part of me wants to save up my days off for a time where I don’t have to wear a mouth mask and can travel freely, but mostly I just want to take some time off to relax. I had scheduled this free week a few months back, without making any reservations or plans, since we didn’t know what kind of activities would be allowed. Only the week before the holiday did we actually start to make reservations, taking into account the current travel/activity restrictions. Doesn’t leave a lot of room for improvisation, but at least a reserved time slot in a museum means there will not be many other people. I’m thinking it will be like a school trip: we’ll mostly take our lunch in a backpack, show up at the museum door at a specific time and have a set timeframe in which to visit everything. Breakfast and dinner will be either at home or – for two nights in Genk – in the hotel room.

Staying local doesn’t sound very exciting, but actually I’m looking forward to it! I spent some time online finding out what to see in Belgium and we made a selection of interesting activities. Some of these things we already knew about and we’ve been saying for ages that we should visit, but somehow we never took the trouble, I suppose it’s just too close by?

Since Monday 24 May is a national holiday, we have almost ten days off in total. We’ll spend two nights in Genk, do a few walks in that area and visit the Gallo-Roman Museum in Tongeren close by. Later this week, we’ll visit the Museum of Natural Sciences and the Royal Museum of Armed Forces and Military History in Brussels.

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The rest of the time, according to a vague plan, will be dedicated to good food and movies at home! Tonight: home made burgers and millionaire short bread as dessert. The movie is still under discussion, but at least we’ll have plenty of time to browse and make up our minds. The weather predictions are not very good for the whole week: intense rain showers, possibility of small local storms and temperatures around 15°C. I did get lucky this morning and was able to work outside a bit in the garden. The clouds were dark and threatening, but just far enough apart to allow for some sunshine in between. Two of my cactuses had sprouted tiny pups (that being the official word for cactus babies), it’s really cute.

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The tiny twins (type unknown), I transplanted into my office green bowl/vase/thing. I had left it at the office last year when moving out – had to work from home due to corona – and two of the three plants inside had died by the time I was able to pick it up. The third, a Joseph’s coat cactus, was fine, it obviously needed a lot less water than the others, so it was not such a good combination to start with. Live and learn. The tiny twin cactuses should be a better match, plus they should remain pretty small and will not breach the top of the vase like the others did. The ox tongue pup got its own tiny pot, it grows pretty slowly so it should be okay for a year or two.