Brussels Cathedral

I hate it when I do this. Sometimes I take a bunch of photos in a day, but then I set aside some of them, like of an iconic bridge, for later for their own blog post, but then I get so exhausted of blogging about the whole trip that the group of photos gets overlooked for months.

When I was walking around Brussels on October 10, 2012, I stopped by the cathedral and took a couple dozen photos, which I left out of my original post to save for later. I just now rediscovered them. Below are some of my favorites. In case you were wondering, atheists love cathedrals. Every single atheist I know agrees. Cathedrals are amazing. The sense of awe and beauty they are designed to inspire is not lost on us. We feel the wow sensation and appreciate it. When in the mindset of a photographer, looking for beauty around every corner, that wow sensation is enhanced. I also appreciate the sense of vital transience and temporal connectedness of being in a building that was built almost a thousand years ago; contemplating how many individuals have walked those steps over the centuries.

On the other hand, when you live in Europe, you need to consume cathedrals in small doses, because once you've seen one, you're really not going to be surprised by any others. But that fateful October day, my appetite for gothic architecture was ripe.

The autumn leaves almost make the cathedral reminiscent of the mythological phoenix.

The stained glass art was top notch.

Whoever created this must've been playing too many violent video games.

Pious chairs.

Clean cathedral floor.

My initial thought about the hanging of that ginormous painting was "How precarious!", but then it occurred to me that if you're going to hang a painting so high, you might as well angle it down towards the viewing public a bit. Still, I hope those chains hold!

This wooden sculpture was impressive.

I love how you can see the wood grain in this skull. What a skullfil skillful sculptor!

Stained glass reflections.

Pipe organs are beautiful.

Chair tunnel.

Templaric!

Did you know that bishops can only travel diagonally?

In total I was only in the cathedral for 10 or 15 minutes, but I enjoyed the architecture and the photography subjects very, very much. I'm very glad I went.