For those of you that have not been to Tongeren in quite some time, they now have a parking garage (across the street from the building with the bathrooms and directly across from where there used to be a metal building...that is now a parking lot...) where sellers take up the whole first floor. The first two things we bought, were in this garage.
Here is a view of the garage.
We went looking for a particular style of clock that I thought would look good over my antique desk that we got from Willy. And we found it!
This is the one I wanted.
And we bought this cabinet to use as an end table next to our sofa. It's only from about 1940 so it's not very old, but it only cost 70€ so we figured we couldn't really go wrong.
And who can forget the absolutely WONDERFUL waffles that you can only get here?
YUM, YUM, YUM! There are just no words to describe how wonderful these things are!
Now some random pictures of the market.
And after Tongeren, we head to Willy and Lutgart's house. I would say that about 95% of our antique furniture came from Willy's store. Our youngest used to tease us that there was a problem when a store owner knew us well enough to send us cards for our birthdays and Christmas. To us though, he may have started out as a store owner, but he and his whole family ended up being lifelong friends. He's no longer in business, as you can see from the pictures below but we already knew that. We just wanted to visit.
And by the way, this is the ONLY thing he still has for sale. He made benches from old headboards and footboards. This one is 120€. After it is gone, he is all done.
I'm sure the remainder of these pictures won't be of any interested to you, unless you knew what Willy's store was like before. I remember it used to be so crowded, that we would take flashlights in, climb on top of furniture and point the flashlight beam at the piece of furniture we were interested in. Most of the time I would have no idea what I was actually getting, until he delivered it. But I knew I could ALWAYS trust his judgement. If he said it was "special" I knew it was.
The empty store:
While we were there, Willy gave Ron 2 French clocks that he had been saving for him.
I went out back to take a walk around their beautiful garden.
And while I was taking pictures, Rika and Gaston showed up! And we had some delicious lunch!
Last summer, Willy, Lutgart, Rika, Gaston and Kasper came to visit us. We had a WONDERFUL time and maybe, when I have time I will blog about all the things they did when they came to visit. The only thing that was a little sad was that Lutgart would get frustrated because she didn't feel like she could communicate in English as well as she wanted to. I didn't give it another thought but she did. When she got home, she enrolled in an English class (which almost brought me to tears when I found out). The thought that she went through all of that work just to learn English so we could communicate made me feel so ashamed that I hadn't tried harder myself. :( Here is the book that she used:
And here I had been feeling so pleased with myself for learning some Norwegian. She put me to shame! She had to write a paper (all in English) for her exam and it was PERFECT. Way to go Lutgart!
Now it is time to head back to David and Theresa's house. Willy, having decided that Ron should stay in Belgium and he would come to Norway again, hopped into the driver's seat of our car!
They are going to come and visit next year! HOORAY!
Now, back to Bingelrade. It's been another wonderful day! One of the things I REALLY miss about the Netherlands is how cheap the flowers are. So, once we got back to David and Theresa's, Ron and I took a walk to the local church and then spent some time looking at flowers along the way and in David and Theresa's garden.
This sign made me laugh.
Tomorrow we see some old friends and neighbors and head up to Den Haag. It's been another perfect day!
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