Mussels in Brussels!
Saturday, July 16th, 2022
Upon arriving in Brussels, we were pleased to find that our stop was just a quick walk to our accommodation. T had strategically selected a hotel room with a view of the treasured Manneken Pis (shown below) so that we could watch the hoards of tourist snap a photo with the little fellow. T and I personally don’t really understand the hype, but it was certainly entertaining to watch others enjoy themselves.
After dropping our packs we set off to find the central square, the Delirium brewery, Jeanneke Pis, and somewhere to enjoy mussels! All of these we found with extreme ease as the central square is only two blocks away from the square, the brewery was a block beyond the square, Jeanneke Pis (shown below) is located within the same street as Delirium, and we enjoyed excellent mussels just a block north of the central square. All told it was a evening spent wandering, eating, and drinking. The smells of waffles was nearly ever present in the air near our hotel and we spent the late hours of the evening planning a bit more and occasionally chuckling to ourselves as another tourist group found the Manneken Pis.
Sunday, July 17th, 2022
We enjoyed sleeping in very late and then after watching the tourists around Manneken Pis for a little while, set off for waffles, we were fortunate to find a venue that could accommodate T’s gluten free need. Unfortunately while she loves gluten, it does not love her biology back. I was perhaps a bit too keen and ordered two waffles. Turns out the sheer richness of the Belgian chocolate mixed with vanilla ice-cream and whipped cream on a decadent waffle was my undoing. By the time I began tucking into my second strawberry covered waffle I had to tap out. T on the other hand knew her limits and smashed her waffle like a champ!
We spent the afternoon wandering through the streets or back at our hotel taking it easy. Up to this point in our journey we had kept ourselves busy, but in Brussels we finally felt good really just taking a day to relax. In the evening we found a fries shop to serve as our dinner and then called it an early night as we planned to wake up before dawn to see the square. *protip if you want really great photos with few or no people be prepared to wake up earlier than you would ever normally want. Additionally, make sure to check if the day you plan to do this is the cities garbage collection morning.
Monday, July 18th, 2022
We woke up at 5:30 am, perhaps slightly delirious from lack of sleep, we wandered out into the predawn light to snap our own photos of Manneken Pis and the centra square. Unfortunately, our eyes were met with streets lined with garbage bags. We had failed to check the garbage collection date and would have been better off making this early rise attempt the day before. Accepting this as a loss, we made the best of what was clear of bags and fortunately most of the central square fell into that category. We snapped a few shots of the square as the first rays of sun emerged to meet the towering roofs.
After enjoying the rising sun, we returned to our hotel and fell back to sleep without the slightest hesitation. When we woke again we simply packed our bags, checked out and returned to the train station to head to the airport. In no time at all it seemed, we were flying away to Copenhagen, Denmark.