A RIOT OF COLOUR!

      For 5 days in August, Brussel's Grand'Place becomes a riot of colour!  Everyone knows about it but it's a surprise at the same time so there is an air of expectancy that floats over the city during these days.
      Every two years, the Grand'Place is covered in a carpet of real flowers.  A design has been chosen, a frame is built and flowers are shipped in from the nursery fields around Belgium - appropriate colours for the design.  This year the theme is Africa, so there are hundreds of boxes of red, yellow, pink and white begonia petals, and hundreds of boxes of white, brown and yellow mums - 600,000 flowers, we are told.  Plus loads of boxes of coloured wood shavings (mostly brown and blue this year).  Not to forget rolls and rolls of grass sod.

On the first day, the frame is made and the sod is laid, according to the design.  All the workers are volunteers - this carpet is a tradition and it's an honour to be able to work on it.

On the second day, the flowers, petals and shavings are put in place, again by volunteers.  I hadn't realised that most of the carpet is petals, billions of them.  Evening falls, the work is done and Brussels is waiting expectantly for the finished product.

And what a spectacle awaits us on the morning of the third day!!  It blows your mind!  It's absolutely gorgeous!  It's huge!

I go up on the city hall balcony but still am not able to get it all in, it's so big!