Brussels

We arrived in Brussels and phoned our couchsurfing host, Ernest. He explained that he would meet us at the train station so we waited, a bit nervously, not knowing quite what to expect. Ernest showed up and walked us back to his flat (it was pouring rain outside), playing tour guide along the way and pointing out various sites along the way. We dropped our bags at the flat and, as the night was still young, Ernest insisted that we head to a local pub to pick up a drink. Ernest is actually from the Netherlands, but is currently doing an internship with Cargill in Brussels. He studied abroad at Michigan State so he is pretty familiar with the United States. We had an excellent chat at the pub and really enjoyed getting to know one another. After a drink at that pub, Ernest decided he wanted to take us to another. We got outside and it had stopped raining so Ernest was really great and took us on a short tour of the city. He brought us to the main square and explained the meaning of the statues on all the buildings (the statues are pointing at one another as to who is the father of the baby inside one of the female statue’s bulging belly). Then he took us to see the Manneken Pis, the most famous statue in Brussels. After Manneken Pis we headed into what is considered the tourist part of town. It is one long street of restaurants but every single restaurant is pretty much the same thing and they are very aggressive about getting you to eat in their restaurant. As we walked down the street every single restaurant’s workers called out to us to come eat in their restaurant…they would follow you as you walked down the street trying to convince you that you needed to eat there. Ernest just laughed and explained that we weren’t hungry but they were still persistent! We finally arrived at our destination, a pub known as Delirium that holds the Guinness Book of World Records for having the most beers available in a bar. You enter the bar and pick up a menu which is about an inch thick full of beers from all around the world. Ernest finally had to just pick a beer because Drew was so completely lost in what he referred to as ‘the Beer Bible’. Drew and I were extremely tired after our drink at the Delirium Bar so we headed back to the flat to catch some shut eye as we had to be up bright and early the next day.

The next morning we woke up and headed off to explore the beautiful city of Brussels. Ernest left us with a few suggestions of what to do with our day and, among them, was to visit Atomium. Atomium is a giant statue from the 1958 World’s Fair and it is located on the outskirts of Brussels. It was neat to see and very futuristic…it reminded me of something you would see at Disney’s Epcot. After Atomium we headed back into the city. We spent some more time in the central square just soaking in the amazing architecture, went back to the Manneken Pis who was dressed up in a cute little outfit to advertise Unicef, headed off to a park to enjoy some of the limited sunshine of the day and explored some of the various aspects of the European Parliament located in Brussels. Because the EU is headquartered in Brussels, the city has a very unique feel to it…most people who live in Brussels are not actually Belgian but are living there from elsewhere in Europe. We also found the Royal Palace in our wanderings around the city which was absolutely beautiful. An interesting note about the streets in Brussels…they’re set up on a circular pattern so when I say we were wandering the streets we were literally wandering the streets! We learned pretty quickly that we shouldn’t try to do anything in the city without first consulting our map! We also took some time in Brussels to take advantage of their delicacies…Belgian waffles, Belgian fries and, of course, Belgian chocolate!

Later in the day, after all of our exploring, we were once again back at the train station and on our way to Paris!