Skywatch Friday

It's Friday so here's a photo of the sky and some upside down people enjoying another one of the rides on offer at the Liege October Fair. You can find more sky pictures (mostly without upside down people) here.

La foire d'Octobre de Liège 4

And here is the pièce de résistance of every fair: the Ferris Wheel. In all its glory.

Even Charlemagne himself is dwarfed by the Wheel!

La foire d'Octobre de Liège 3

I'm so dizzy, my head is spinning, like a whirlpool, it never ends! Another October Fair ride, this one has only one dimension: dizziness.

La foire d'Octobre de Liège 2

Another ride in the October Fair. This one is less dizzying but more vertigo-inducing...

La foire d'Octobre de Liège

What is this? People screaming their lungs out on XTreme, the scariest ride of the Liège October Fair.

Metallurgy Museum

Sculptures in the courtyard of the Metallurgy Museum. For once, they're not bad.

It's Friday!

The Meuse, the sky, the Skywatch!

In vino veritas

The inhabitants of Liège clearly like their wine. We need more bottle recycling points...

La tour Simenon

The charming tower in the foreground is called the Simenon Tower. Georges Simenon was one of the most famous children of Liège and possibly the best known crime writer in the french language. He was the creator of inspector Maigret. I'd like to know what he thought of this building carrying his name.

Site under construction

This is the side of the Mediacité I didn't show yesterday. Clearly, it's far from finished...

Mediacité

The Mediacité is the latest grand design to grace the streets of Liège. It is a large complex of buildings that will house shops, a cinema, the RTBF offices (French-speaking Belgian state TV), an ice skating rink, a gym, bowling, TV and film studios, broadcasting and multimedia companies etc, etc, etc. It will be inaugurated in 3 days so everyone's working round the clock to finish as much as possible before the red carpet is rolled out. The various buildings that make up the complex will all be linked by a sinewy, snake-like glass corridor. It must be said that very few of the buildings will be ready for the inauguration. Even the snake looks unfinished at the moment. Here's a few photos; notice that the port-a-loos are still there!

Sunsetwatch

Another Friday, another Skywatch.

J'y suis, j'y reste

Here I am, here I'll stay! It's a banner hung outside some of the buildings near the new train station that are marked for demolition. The city council and the architect want to create an enormous tree-lined, water-featured esplanade that will lead directly from the station's entrance to the riverbank. This project, however, requires the demolition of a number of buildings, some of which are private residences. You can imagine that the residents are none too happy.

Sunsets are ten a dozen

The sun sets unfailingly every day. With the right weather conditions, you can take one of these every day. Given that Liege has 178 sunny days per year on average and that the life expectancy in Belgium is 79.22 years, a person starting to take photos after his 10th year can produce 12321 sunset pictures in a lifetime.

Graffiti

Here's some more graffiti, in the pedestrian passages under the Pont Albert. Only the architects of the 1950s and 60s thought that such tunnels were good ideas.

Black and white

Rabbits lazing around in the rabbit farm of the Parc de la Boverie.

Another Skywatch

The sun sets below the clouds while flying from Brussels to Manchester last week. More celestial thrills to be found here.

Liège medley

A view of several of the key elements that make up the city: The river Meuse, the Pont des Arches with its figureheads, the twin towers of Saint Barthélemy and the citadel Hill.

MAMAC

The Museum of Modern and COntemporary Art on a sunny September Sunday afternoon.

Liege Nautical Club

This is the headquarters of the Liege Nautical Club on a sunny September Sunday.

La foire de Liège

A zoom on the Ferris wheel of the Liège Fair. This year the Fair will celebrate its 150th anniversary. Apparently, it's been going on for nearly a 1000 years but 150 years ago it was moved to its present location. Six weeks of wholesome family fun and merry-making will start on this weekend.