Further to yesterday’s description of the fabulous foyer …

Step inside The Cafe of Dreams and you’re facing a gleaming glass wall. Look up and you’ll see a light fitting, a small ball hanging from the ceiling by a black chord. The ball is a mirror, with the bottom cut out for the light to shine from. At the ceiling, the chord goes into a mirrored circular base.

This fun light fitting feels futuristic. I love that it mirrors the space in 360 degrees of reflection.

Two more identical light fittings are on the other side of the glass wall, placed at 45 degrees to each other. Hovering.

So it’s as if three orbs are floating in the foyer. Lighting the way. Brightly. Silver balls containing golden light.

A beige curved line streaks horizontally across the glass wall.

The beige streamer is intersected twice by two bright green shoots which bloom upwards and outwards, beginning their growth together, from the same point, at the ground of the glass wall. One shoot grows vertically up the glass wall. The other shoot is adventurous and grows to the left, taking itself onto and across the door in the glass wall, and then onto the glass at the other side of the doorway.
On the door, it crosses with the beige line growing horizontally.

As you enter Cyres Cafe, the outer wall, to your left, has a border, from the floor to about waist height, of the most magnificent marble. Black marbleling through white. This border continues up the stairs in front of you and completes at the First Level, when it meets the steps up to the first room you come to on that level. This marble border has borders top and bottom, and panelling, carved in it. It’s very beautiful. Perfect for pastry, if it would stick like pasta and I could roll at right angles!

The foyer floor is a mosaic. Imagine two black rectangular borders, one in the first half of the floor space, before the stairs, one in the second half of the floor space, beside the staircase. A black border, the width of six tiles, each tile being approximately 1 centimetre square. Inside of that black border is a smaller rectangle of black, and, white, 1 centimetre square tiles. The black tiles remind me of the ramparts of a castle. Looked at in a certain Cyresey way, they could also reprsent a square ‘C’, linking up. Inside of that black and white border, is another black border, only the width of two tiles. Within that is an expanse of white tiles, in patterns that remind me of fans. The white tiles all together look like mother of pearl.

I would love to see your drawing of the above, to see how my description translates.

Above the marble border, the walls and the ceiling are brilliant white, painted over amazing coving and moulding. This gives the walls and ceiling an extra dimension, and makes them feel fascinating (in my eyes, anyway!!).

It’s a foyer with a magical majestic feel, history meets contemporary and beyond, yet for all its black-and-whiteness, incredibly warm, intimate, and inviting.

I love to stand looking up at the space, and, looking right through the glass wall + doorway into The Cafe.

There are two glass panels in the wall that stretches the length of the foyer, opposite the marble and the staircase, on your right walking into the building. One includes a doorway, the other is solid glass. Again, this lets in the light.

In the next post, we’ll step into The Cafe again together, and for the first time together we’ll go into the bar and kitchen … Tomorrow is the official opening date of Cyres Cafe Antwerp!

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