Last night I was laying out the plans for the next few days and decided to check out the Mechelen museum website and what to my wondering eyes doth appear? A really nice article about the restoration of some of the shrines for the 500 year anniversary of the publishing of Thomas Moore’s Utopia in 2016. I leave it to you to read the website and all about the connection between Utopia, Mechelen and the Gardens. I feel very educated! But there are X-rays of some of the flowers there.

So I wrote to the head curator on the project and explained that I was in the area and wanted to interview her and I gave her enough of my background to make me interesting enough to want to meet me.

We got up at 7am today. Please see my prior rant about alarm clocks on vacation. We had breakfast and left mom behind. She requested not to go along today because she wanted to stay home. Word is she got a great deal accomplished today.

We drove through the rain most of the way there. We got gas in Belgium and proceeded to France. We were headed to the museum in Arras which is a fairly big town outside Paris. It took just over 3.5 hours to get there. We had to drive around the block just once to make it into the overnight parking lot next to the museum. We walked in and were directed down the hall and to the right. We asked about the bathroom and were instead pointed in the other direction. We walk down the hall (which was full of 13th and 14th century grave stones) and used the restroom and then walked back down the hall and just past the hall entrance where we came in was the very lovely shrine. I took 124 pictures and my husband took about 50 and most of them were of the shrine.

Then we proceeded down the hall and ended up in the 100 years of Versailles exhibit which was very well done but we went through it very fast. Left through the gift shop where we asked about validating parking (no) and left the museum. At no point were we asked to pay. We got back out to the parking lot and a guy was fixing the pay machine and when I told him we only spoke English he told us to get in our car and he’d let us out. SO parking was free as well.

We did have to pay 4.10 on the toll road and were very thankful that we had the money and the experience of dealing with toll roads. We were not expecting it since we didn’t have a toll on the way there. Also no rain on the way home.

When we got back there was an email from the curator. She is not in the country at the moment but she arranged for me to meet a local textile expert who has an interest in the flowers as well (and making them) and she is going to let me in the workroom where they currently have more flowers out of the shrines than they ever had before but I’m not to touch them unless I have to!  So could this possibly be the dream come true? My appointment will be on Friday.

So I’ve got an appointment tomorrow to see one of the other shrines, the one in Balen. Have a good night and a Happy Thanksgiving.