A Day of Discovery

This day was our day to see Brussels, Belgium’s sort of capital (seeing as they don’t currently have any government). And it is about 45 mins away rom Ghent where my friend Elisa lives so we ate some fantastic cereal and took a bus to Ghent’s main train station. After working her Dutch magic, we all got round-trip tickets to Brussels on the train for 9€. Not bad. The bad is that our train got delayed and we missed the other train to Brussels. Dang. Needless to say, we did finally make it there via the slowest train ever. Also by taking the Brussels metro, which I may or may not have paid for.

Then Mike and I enacted Plan Wander (which is what we do in every city) which means we find a free map somehow and slowly wander around the city centre and stumble across famous landmarks and places. And let me tell you it worked swimmingly. We stumbled upon the city market, Manneken Pis (which, believe it or not is a 1 foot tall statue that pees and gets dressed up daily in one of over 800 different outfits. Ya. Really.)

Wearing his grad gown… and pissing. Real classy.

We got some amazing Belgian waffles and chocolate and went to find some cathedrals and find we did. Little known fact. Belgium has more cathedrals than people! Amazing, no!!? Ok, maybe a small exaggeration but they are like Starbucks in the States. One on every street corner, baby. But they are quite pretty so it’s worth it seeing them. We also stumbled upon Parc du Bruxelles as well as the palace for the King.

 

How cool is this cinema?!?

Needing a bit of refreshment, we wandered around this restaurant filled street until what do we find except for Delirium, the pub we had actually been wanting to check out. The reason for this is that this place has over 2004 beers available and most of them are Belgian or German. Those two countries love their beer. They also love their “heavy” beers which to them means a high alcohol content. Now in the States around 5% is normal but they have beers with up to 11%. It goes to 11, man!! Crazy. That’s almost as much as wine.

This is a Belgian taxi cab.

After that we decided to go to this place called Atomium, which Elisa really wanted to see. We took a subway probably 15 stops to go see it and there was this huge “Love Parade” party happening but it cost money to get it so we just looked at it from afar and Elisa was happy. We went back through all the cool subway station they have in Brussels. Every stop is a different theme! Legit!

 

 

This eye doctor looks a little sketchy.

We then proceeded to take our train then bus back to Ghent and stopped of at an Embassy to try the food there. We relaxed for a bit back at Elisa’s crib and wanted to check out the nightlife in Ghent which surprisingly is dead during the summer. So much so that many of the bars actually close down. But it was still pretty lively and we saw a ton of this café’s with outdoor seating where people just sit and drink delicious red cherry beer. We stopped at one and hit up a club for a little bit. Good stuff.

I just love all the beautiful European… scaffolding.

Bed time! Belgium has worn me out completely.