(40 hours in Brussels, Belgium)
We said good bye to my beautiful Paris a few days ago and started our long round about journey home. Home is kind of a relative word as we will be staying with my parents and then Daniel's parents on our way up to Connecticut.
So much luggage!
Our first stop is Brussels, Belgium. Chosen at random on our way to Amsterdam also chosen at random. We only had a little less than 48 hours in Brussels so we planned our trip very closely on the priorities of the culture ... Chocolate, waffles, fries (they apparently invented them), and BEER. There was not time to be waisted on dallying on Brussel Sprouts.
After getting in we headed down to the Grand Place which is suppose to be beautiful with ornate old buildings. It was crazy crowded with mobs of people in orange and yellow shirts, and pep bands blaring, and two chicken suits running round, and small raquette balls that kept rocketing out of nowhere.
Turned out to be the National Championship of Balle Pelote. It is a weird cross of handball played like tennis with the addition of goal post. In short it was horribly confusing, luckily two nice gentlemen tried to explain the game to us as we jumped back and forth between their broken english and our broken french, talk about a language exercise.
The orange guy in the rear is the going to bat the tiny ball with his hand.
We ended up staying for the entire game we were both disappointed that yellow was not able to mount a full 4 game turn around. I am debating starting up my own league in Connecticut. The game took up most of our afternoon so we headed out to dinner afterwards.
First beer of the Trip, Hoegaarden Rosée.
Followed up by our second beer of the trip Hoegaarden Grand Cru, which was a high gravity. We also had dinner but we came for the beer. We were pretty beat from the day so we called it an early night.
You may have heard of the famous boy peeing fountain in Brussels, if you haven't, you shouldn't, and if you have thank me you have now seen it and move on to the next thing on your Belgium itinerary. Ta Da...
We went back to the Grand Place sans competition
Very pretty indeed.
Stopped by the beer museum, which was more the Belgium Beer Guild PR video but you get a beer at the end of the "tour".
Next we did a real tour of the Lambic Cantilion Brewery where they brew with wild yeast. Very cool, here Daniel is playing tour guide for us, the tour is self guided. They still use the 100+ equipment the company was founded with.
Beer in Casks!
Beer in bottles!
At the end of this tour we got some Lambic beers, soo pretty.
At this point it was time for lunch, Belgiun waffles for lunch, there were also some frites sadly not photographed.
Post lunch was followed by more beer. The Ala Mort Subite bar still has it's original 1920's decore and some delicious micro brew Lambics. This one is a peach.
And of course I had to try the raspberry.
Now it wasn't all beers, I did stop by this lovely "mall" and bought some chocolates.
Ta Da ... truth be told there were five different chocolate shop stops. In my defense there are about three chocolate shops on every street block, the idea you could just go into one is ridiculous. What if you accidentally went into the worse chocolate shop on Brussels, what a waste of a trip, nope best to get two chocolates at a couple of stores and compare.
Before dinner we stopped off for another beer. Daniel sought out a bar serving Kwak just so he could order the special glass holder. There are almost as many bars as chocolate shops ... but not quite.
Daniel talked me into hitting up the casino in town for a hour later that night. I did not beer there I think I had successfully reached my beer quota for the day. The casino wasn't bad, it sure wasn't Vegas but it wasn't the middle of Missouri either. Interesting to watch a black jack dealer work a game simultaneously in both french and english. Sadly we didn't make enough winnings to pay for the trip, maybe next time.
On to Amsterdam and a house boat!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment