Someday Saturday: Belgium

Today's Someday Saturday is BELGIUM!

For me, it has always been a place of quintessential European charm mixed with some mystique.  The mystique may come from the fact that my favorite author's most famous character, Private Detective Hercule Poirot, hails from Belgium.  While most of the novels are set in London (another place which has been featured in Someday Saturday), Poirot makes it very clear to people that he is Belgian. If you haven't checked out Hercule Poirot or Agatha Christie yet, please start with this book or maybe this one.  Hope you love them half as much as I do!

Here are a few other interesting facts about Belgium:

• While Belgium is the 5th smallest country in the EU (after Malta, Luxembourg, Cyprus and Slovenia), it is the 6th highest importer of coffee in the world!
• Belgium has been producing chocolate for almost 400 years. There are over 2000 chocolate shops!
• The international presence, in organizations and embassies, is second only to New York.
• There are more castles per kilometer than anywhere else in the whole world.
• Belgium can claim 3 distinct language regions, and parts of its populations speak Dutch, French, and German.

Beautiful, isn't it?

What about you?

Have you been to Belgium? Do you have any desire to go? It it on your list now? Do you know something else interesting about Belgium to share?

Someday Saturday: Sequoia National Forest

Photo credit

I really have a thing for majestic trees.  I absolutely enjoyed our family's vacation north of San Francisco to the Muir Woods just last year.  Those trees are large, of course, but their real claim to fame is their height.  Still on the bucket list for the Powells are the big, fat, giant sequoias!

Visit the official page of the Sequoia National Forest to learn even more facts like these:

1. The Giant Sequoias really are the world's largest trees.

2. This tree only grows naturally in a narrow 60-mile band of mixed conifer forest on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California.

Fascinating!

I think I have been drawn to the beauty and mystery of trees since my mom introduced me to this poem as a young girl.  Enjoy!

Trees

By Joyce Kilmer

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest

Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,

And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear

A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;

Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,

But only God can make a tree.