As I write this, we are done. The class is over and we have had our farewell lunch. I am not sure when I will get this posted online but as tired and drained as I am it probably won't get finished until tomorrow when I am in the airport lounge waiting for my flight to Copenhagen.

We did the slog from hell yesterday. I woke up a little before 2:00 am., couldn’t get back to sleep, and my legs were cramping from all the walking the day before. We had to meet up at 5:00 to catch the train to Brussels. Scott and Mimo had hired taxis to get us to the train station, so we made the 5:19 train. It took about 90 minutes to get back to Brussels. Once there, we took taxis to the city center, where we shot photos for a little while. The panorama at the top of this page is from our first stop—Brussels' main square.

After shooting there for about 40 minutes, we walked a ways and had breakfast at a cafeteria-style restaurant nearby. Then we completely switched to a different subject matter for the rest of our time in Brussels. Up until then, our photography had focused on historical Belgium. Yesterday (once we were done shooting in the very early morning), we switched to ultra-modern. You will see it in my photos below.

We first took a subway ride to a very cool subway station and shot there for about half an hour. Then we took two subway rides and stopped at Atomium, a science center/museum all about the elements, housed in the pretty cool building you see at right. Inside those spherical shapes were all kinds of exhibits and light shows and more. You went up to the very top to start and worked your way back down again. In each round sphere were science, music and light experiments we could photograph and use to capture interesting patterns and lighting. It was kind of cool but not my usual kind of photography. There are some photos from inside the gallery below.

After we finished touring the Atomium, Scott picked up the tab for a panini sandwich and a drink for everyone at the Atomium snack bar. We ate quickly and were back on the subway in no time, heading back to the train station for our train ride to Antwerp. I thought I would show you a quick map of all the places we went on our Belgian slog today.

In Antwerp, it was more of the same. Scott and Mimo gave us some great ideas for photos in the train station, and then we took another taxi ride to a kind of cool building with an 11-story spiral staircase you could look up or down. By the time we got there, all I wanted was to get back to the hotel and go to bed. I certainly did not want to spend an hour while people took way too many photos of a spiral staircase. I told Scott I'd let others shoot it, and I asked if he knew where the restroom was. He told me to take the elevator to level B of the building, look around, and I would find it. There was no restroom on level B. You know what was on level B? The bottom of that damn spiral staircase. So as long as I was there, I took a couple of photos and ended up using one of them for my afternoon critique the next day. And of course Scott had to rub it in the entire time.

Our last stop in Antwerp was way out at the port, where a very modern building sits atop a very old one. The new building looks like a glass ship perched on the original port building. The best way for me to describe it is for you to see it. It is in my photos below, and the shot with the sun creating a star inside the crook of the building was the one I submitted for the Best of the Week contest.

We shot at that location for almost an hour. To be honest, I had all the photos I wanted from every angle within minutes of getting there. But we had to hang around while some people shot the building and everything around it for an hour or so. TOTALLY EXHAUSTED. Finally, we got back in our taxi and fought our way through Antwerp rush hour to the train station, where we had to wait about an hour for a train back to Bruges. Everyone got snack bar food for dinner, and we boarded the train around 7:30. We were back in Bruges by 9:00 and, thankfully, in bed by 9:30.

As many of you know, I walk a lot. Before my recent cardiac scare, I was walking four to six miles a day. But this day, which started at 5:00 and finished at 9:00 and included 16,000+ steps, just about killed me. I am still feeling it. Not because of the walk, but because of the 22 lb backpack I am carrying with all my photo gear. Scott warned us not to bring too much, but then he said, “Bring a tripod, a platypod, your camera with your main lens, a really wide-angle lens if you have one, and a few other things.” My back will probably hurt for a week after that day.

Thank the gods we only had one more day to go.

“Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.”— Kurt Vonnegut