Open Door at the Park Abbey

November 17, 2012

Open Door at the Park Abbey

(this is an old post from about 4 weeks ago that I never had the time to complete and publish....now that winter is ready to take-over from fall, I am nostalgic to warm sunny days, even warm fall days where I got out of the door for the last time in just a sweater. Lovely. So time to dust this draft off and get these lovely pictures published).

Yesterday there were visiting days at the Park Abbey closeby where we live. It's such a lovely historic domain just around the corner where we also had our wedding.

There's only 3 monks living and working in the abbey anymore together with a priest but the domains have been sold in a leasehold estate to the city of Leuven and to the organisation "Aid to the Church in need". So some of the buildings are currently offices of organisations, some college rooms, ... A lot of the buildings were in urgent need of restaurantion which started in the last decade, with the guest house building next to the church (just finished a few weeks before our wedding and currently a museum) and the last years the big entry gates have been renewed. Currently there is drastic works going on to restore the old water mill.

So mid October there was an "open door/ open construction site day" where you could visit the ongoing works, get info on the different phases of the renovations going on on the domains for the next decade.

Even though I haven often been at the abbey and my running route goes around the abbey's fish pounds, I still discovered parts of the garden on one side of the domain I had never explored before. It was gorgeous and lots of people enjoyed the sunny day to stroll around and explore.