At the EU Headquarters they had every language of members in the EU listed on these plaques, I'm pointing at the English one of course.
After our mini adventure to the closed EU Headquarters (unfortunately we didn't see any important delegates or working people), we began wandering to where we thought the "Grand Place" square was. In the wandering journey we passed the old castle; the gardens were spectacular in the front of it and reminded me of Alice in Wonderland.
We made our way through the park, down a windy street to the Central Rail Station which we thought would give us a good landmark to find other things from. Not going in with a game plan was an entertaining process and it was good luck we kept on stumbling onto other landmark locations. We first made it to what we thought was the Grand Place because it was a modest sized square with vendors and a handful of eateries. We popped into a corner restaurant because they had amazing looking Belgian waffles with fruit in the windows. We each ate a more filling meal; I had a croquet--because I'm addicted to this piled high fat layered amazing combination of flavors. Post lunch we kept on wandering and found 1. a giant cone and 2. an arcade with chocolateers and mini shops, very cute and bought some chocolate truffles!
After wandering more and more down a restaurant row where waiters were yelling their specials and trying to get us to eat in, we found our way to the ACTUAL Grand Place..of course we had been in the wrong spot and it was just around the corner from where we were. Good Adventure. We could definitely tell that it was the Grand Place because of the Gold finishings on the buildings and a building much like the Glockenshpiel Building in Munich.
Our next task was to find the "peeing boy" statue..which is actually a very small statue over a fountain of a little boy peeing...one of the staple tourist attractions of Brussels apparently. Later on we found some flavored chocolate peeing boy's in a chocolate shop; strawberry chocolate was delicious!
We walked around more to find the Museum of Chocolate and took a tour which was not that great but we did get a few free samples of chocolate and see a Chocolate making demonstration...in French..haha. All we could recognize was chocolat...chocolat..but after a while I thought I could actually understand some French.
Because we're cheap and needed to try the different beers from Belgium, we picked up three each to drink before dinner. I got to drink/taste:
- Belle Rue-cherry beer--definitely loved this one, sweet but scrumptious!
- Leffe Blonde
- Kasteel
- Bush
- Delirium Nocturium
- Tramboica
Besides this list there's a couple more we tried at a pub later and the next day. At dinner we went to one of the restaurants that was trying to get us in for lunch. We drank out of these unique glasses that Brussels/Belgium is known for too, it looks something like a beaker of beer. One of my co-workers drew it out for me before I went so I knew to ask for it.
Day 2: We made it to the Cathedral and walked a mile or so to another church/synagogue that wasn't open. Also we were going to try and make it to the "atom/molecule" building because the metro wasn't running :( The weather wasn't nearly as great the second day and between downpours we were getting around the city. Got my Belgian waffle finally mmm mm gooood. Had our last drinks before heading to the airport at a bar with funeral, skulls and bones decor. With barely an observable door down dark alley way, there was the bar in low lighting and a table with a skeleton under it. Gretchen and I got beers served in skulls!
I liked Brussels but it was definitely a place to go for a day trip. We came back for Easter Sunday in London
(The writing is definitely going downhill but I'm trying to get out the backlogged stories before I head out tomorrow for Milan, Italy and go railing around Bern, Zurich, Vienna, Prague, and Budapest!)
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