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Marisa Livet | all galleries >> All My Galleries >> Elsewhere - Countries and Towns I have liked >> Belgium - Le Plat Pays >> Carnet de Voyage 2006 > The surprises of a restaurant...
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23-MAY-2006 Marisa

The surprises of a restaurant...

Gent - Belgium

This is not a picture of the restaurant itself, I could not take any, Sergey and I were too amazed…I’ll tell you the reasons for that, if you feel like reading these silly lines..
This photo shows the upstairs lavatory of that incredible restaurant.
Let’s start from the beginning.
It was raining more and more heavily, the wind was blowing from all directions at once, Sergey and I were soaked wet and it was lunch time.
We were told that in St. Michael’s square there was a good restaurant, so we managed to find the square and we looked around desperately for a restaurant, it was nearly dark, even though it was noon, we saw only one and it seem also all the few people around had the same instinctive decisions, because all get into that place.
It was a bizarrely decorated place, with enormous paper menu, where all was written incredibly small and on every table there was a magnifying lens on purpose…to read the menu.
But there was very little to read, because practically there was nothing to eat, just some salads, some sandwiches…
We felt like having something warm, so we discovered, using the magnifying lens, in a corner of the menu a dish of fried zucchini.
We ordered that and we had after a while a nice plate with four pieces of zucchini each.
We ordered two bottles of mineral water and we got a small one for two. We started laughing nervously and we looked around for some hidden candid cameras…
At a table by ours a couple of elderly people had ordered a sandwich, the man got a plain ham sandwich, he opened it , he ate all the ham using his fingers, then he took fork and knife to cut the simple bread in cubes and to eat them separately.
We kept on looking for a candid camera….
But there wasn’t any.
We paid the bill and I decided to get upstairs to the lavatory and then I found another rather amazing scene. The lavatory was decorated in a luxurious way, totally different from the restaurant, with crimson velvet curtains everywhere, masking the doors.
While I was there the old man of the sandwich came upstairs and looking for the gentlemen’s door opened one at random, under the red velvet curtain, and entered into…a small closet full of brooms.
I had an attack of nearly hysterical laugh.
The man came out and, looking desperate, went downstairs again.
Sergey and I felt rather starved, but in totally funny and perfect mood and we went out to cope bravely with another dose of Gent rain.

Canon PowerShot S60
1/100s f/2.8 at 5.8mm full exif

other sizes: small medium original auto
Andrys Basten13-Dec-2006 11:13
I have to return here another day after some sleep but I skipped after reading page 1
to skim the other pages and arrived at this one and burst out laughing while reading,
and I still have tears in my eyes. That huge menu and trying to find food listed on it using a magnifying glass, and then the bathroom -- hilarious.
chrisse14-Jun-2006 12:37
Oh Marisa, what a wonderful story. You really put a smile to my face now. Can you remember the name of this unique restaurant, I really would like to go there once.
christine