Photo of the Week

Where am I this week? I'm in Brussels, Belgium! The land of chocolate, waffles, and fries. This photo is of city hall which was built in two different time periods and by two different people. The more you look at it, the more uneven the two halves become. Some say this is because the Catholics believed that perfection could only be achieved by God, and so a building must be imperfect so that one would avoid impersonating God. You can see that the statues are unequal, the door is off center, the widows are different shapes, etc... See how many differences you can spot.

I got a lot of great questions this week and some of them followed similar themes so I figured I’d answer them here:

Question: Alyssa and Phillip wanted to know when/where did the Queen start her reign
Answer: She had her coronation at Westminster Abbey (my last photo) in 1953


Question: Alex asked a great question about why we would need both a Queen AND a PM
Answer: I don’t have a perfect answer but I would say that it is partially tradition and partially logistics. The Queen’s main role is as a diplomat and she does a lot of things that the PM just doesn’t have time for. I agree that it’s kind of a word system but England has had a monarchy forever, and it’s too late to change now. The next best option is to just have someone with actual power and someone who is a figure head.


Question: Kevin and Valeria want to know about the heights of Big Ben and the tallest building in England.
Answer: Big Ben isn’t actually that big! It’s 315ft, but the Wells Fargo building in downtown Portland is 545ft if that gives you an idea of scale. The tallest building in all of England is The Shard which stands at 1,003ft. That’s TWICE the size of the Wells Fargo Building and is the length of almost 3.5 football fields!


Question: Do I know the Queen
Answer: No, but I saw Meghan Markle and Prince Harry when they visited Bristol!

See y'all on Monday with an explanation of Brexit and what it means for the UK