Brussels, Belgium

The city of Waffles, Chocolate, and Beer!

The flight to Belgium went a lot smoother than I though it would go.  Brussels was definitely a lot bigger than we thought it would be.  Once we got there we were so lost we picked up a map but things were in french and just really confused us.  After taking the wrong train and missing our stop we finally found our hostel.  The hostel was a lot of help they gave us an easier map and showed the key places to stay in.  We went to dinner in the city center just at a little restaurant.  Looking at the menu I literally closed my eyes and pointed at something to eat.  I couldn't read anything it was in all french.  Our waitress new some english and tried to help us as much as possible.  Thinking I would save some money on my meal I ordered water like everyone else.  Turns out my water was 5.25 euro!!  I soon learned that beer was much cheaper than water which is crazy. We went to bed early that night since we were up so early traveling.

Saturday we took a tour bus that took you all over Brussels.  At each stop you could hop off and take as much time as you wanted to do whatever you pleased.  Then you wait about 10 minutes or so for the next bus.  There were more older people on the bus than college students but, there was still handful.  I found it funny that since it was raining a little the only people getting off the bus were the younger college students.  A little rain never hurt anyone.  We stopped at some really cool places like the Royal Residence, Parliament, and the Manniken Pis.  Mannekin Pis street was my favorite.  It reminded us of Diagon alley from Harry Potter and all weekend that is what we referred to it as.  Along that street we walked in to pretty much every other chocolatier and sampled quite a selection of chocolates! So yummy!  We didn't quite get our fill of chocolate so we decided to try a famous belgium waffle.  I ordered mine with chocolate and strawberries on it.  It was so delicious!  Eventually the rain caught up to us and we headed back to the hostel and hung out there.

Most hostel's include a breakfast with your stay and this one was probably one of my favorites.  Only in Belgium do they serve butter, jam, and CHOCOLATE for your spreads for toast!

Sunday was my favorite day! All weekend I was in search for grand place.  We couldn't find yesterday and with the weather being a lot nicer today was the day.  Turns out we walked in a circle outside the entire place yesterday without knowing it!  Grand place was so pretty!  I wanted to see it at night as well so we stayed in town until it got dark out.  We had a lot of time to waste till it got dark out so of went to a few more chocolatier's grabbed some lunch waffles and did a little shopping.

Next we decided to kill the rest of our time by going to the famous pub Delirium.  It serves over 2,000 different kinds of beers.  My kind of place!  I had a really hard time picking what to get.  Since it wasn't that busy the bartender was very kind to help me out.  He let me taste a lot of different types of beer on tap.  I ended up ordering 3 different types of beer while stayed and hung out for a few hours.  There was a few groups of people we got to talk to and hear their stories of traveling.  Also the bartender had a lot to say.  We were talking about our government oh joy! Turns out Belgium people are very interested in US government because ours is very well put together compared to theirs.  They recently went 165 days without official  government rule from the Parliament.  This is because Belgium is made up of French, Dutch and Germans and no one in Parliament could agree on anything.

Finally, it was dark out and we headed to Grand Place! The wait was so worth it! The entire place was lit up and so beautiful.  We took a lot of great pics.


Monday morning it was time to head back to Ireland and I was really excited to head back I actually missed the place!