We haven't traveled anywhere in awhile and decided it was time, we don't have another trip for three weeks, so we found a great deal online to go to Brussels, so we decided to go. We got up early this morning for an 8 am train to Belgium. When we arrived it was almost 11 am Brussels time, we decided to find our hotel to drop off bags before doing any sight-seeing. It was cold and a little rainy but still worth it.
We stayed at the Renaissance Hotel, a 5 star hotel that we got a great deal on, it was only 59 Euros a night. When we checked in we noticed the board on the wall that said the cheapest rooms were 499 Euros per night, woo hoo! After dropping off the bags we headed to the concierge desk to get a recommendation for lunch. The concierge pointed us to The Staff, a french restaurant. We were a little hesitant because the entire menu was in French, we had to try to figure out words from our translation book. The waitress came over and was extremely friendly to us, she helped us decipher the menu for the most part. We ended up eating penne pasta with ham, tomatoes and parmesan cheese and a curry chicken stir-fry with vegetables and sharing a half bottle of wine. It was actually very good, it was our best meal that we had while in Brussels.
Finally, we were off to see some sites. We took the bus out to Manneken Pis, the fountain of the peeing boy. This is probably the most famous thing in Brussels. He has over 600 costumes that they can put on him, and when he is wearing a costume he pees beer instead of water, oh well, no costume this time. He was actually much smaller than I had thought he would be.
Here is Manneken Pis, isn't he cute.
Next it was over to Grand Place, the big square in Brussels. We walked around here for a bit and then through the Galeries Royales de Saint-Hubert, a very upscale shopping arcade built in 1847. We did buy some chocolate but that was it.
This is the Maison du Roi (a Medieval style "kings house" set in Grand Place, though no king ever actually lived there). The crane is them putting up decorations for Christmas.
This is the Statue of Everard 't Serclaes (the myth is that you stroke the limbs for good luck, which we did, we are keeping our fingers crossed as well)
Next, we were off to the chocolate museum, yummy! We got a few samples and the lady who did the demonstration was fabulous to watch and listen to. She had such a great personality and knew her stuff.
Here is our chocolate lady with a 5 kilo block of chocolate:
The next stop was made at the Costume museum, I did enjoy it better than the one in Bath. All of the dresses were made by the same designer between 1989 and 2004, while some seemed to be from the early 80's. The drawings of the designs were neat to look at as well.
We ventured on to The Comic Strip Museum (Centre Belga de la Banda Dessinee) after a few wrong turns. I was so happy to find a Smurf statue in the lobby, I had hopes that I would see some comics of them. Most of the strips there were Dutch strips, so we couldn't read them but we finally got to a section of Jonah Et Pirlouit by Peyo in which the Smurfs were originally introduced in the 50's, I had no idea. They even had their own spin off comic book series before becoming so popular in the states as a cartoon. We really enjoyed going there.
Tami with the Baby Smurf statue:
It was time to rest and have a drink so we went to A La Mort Subite, a pub that I had read about that is supposed to be one of the best "fruit" beer bars. We each had 2 beers and split a plate of fromagge (cheese). Greg had 2 Trappist beers while I had a Cherry beer and a Faro (beer with candy sugar), they were all good. Next, we decided to walk to La Bella Maraichere, an upscale French/Belgium restaurant. We got there but really were not that hungry to pay that much for food, plus it was mainly fancy seafood, we were in the mood for something a little more low key. So, we decided to go back to Chi-Chi's, a Tex-Mex chain from the States, that we had passed a few blocks back. It was not Frontera but I guess it will do.
Time to go relax at the hotel, they have an indoor heated pool and hot tub, yes! We swam some laps, relaxed in the hot tub, swam some more laps, and relaxed a little more. We then decided to go have a drink in the hotel bar. They just so happened to have had a jazz band playing, so it was super relaxing, have a drink and listening to some jazz. At this time it was nearly 11 pm, we were ready to go to bed and get rested for day two.
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