Brussels

We arrived after a long car journey from Brittany and extensive security checks, but I guess that was only to be expected in Brussels at the mo!

We hopped on a particularly hot train to take us to the city centre.  Trying to find the hotel was interesting, google told us it was a short walk, and indeed it was, but we had arrived in a busy capital centre on a Saturday evening, it was hot and the streets were full of folks just milling about and generally getting in the way.  There were many many people begging with babies in their arms and quite frankly it was smelly, probably not helped by the extreme heat it was noisy and there were soldiers everywhere.  Eventually we found our gadgety hotel where there are no staff, just machines to check us in and issue keycards.  Andy particularly liked this bit though............I think his exact words were "not having to talk to people is always a bonus", not that he is antisocial at all!!!!!!!!:-)  We cooled off a little and showered and braved the crowds once again to get fed and watered, this was a needs must meal, not fine dining in any way, we wanted to eat then sleep it had been a long day.  The hotel was just what we needed though, clean quiet and the air conditioning worked well, so by morning we were feeling in much better spirits, especially when I wandered into a lounge area to find free coffee and pastries provided by the invisible staff, they were just there waiting to be scoffed, so scoff them we did.

We left the hotel and wandered off to explore, we saw some lovely architecture and there were considerably less people about, less noise and the temperature had dropped so we were beginning to think Brussels wasn't so bad after all.  Then all we did was turn left instead of right as we had done the night before and wandered into the Grand Place!!!!!!    WE WERE STUNNED AND AMAZED!  It was one of the most beautiful squares I have ever seen, and probably all the more stunning because we weren't expecting it.  The pics don't really do it justice but if you ever get the opportunity to visit Brussels, you must because it is beautiful.

Beccy has run out of words now so I've taken over!! As Beccy says Brussels turned out to be a real surprise after our first underwhelming impressions! We had planned on booking ourselves onto a beer and chocolate tour - only to be put off by the price, 150 euros for a two hour tour is just too much - it'd buy quite a bit of beer, but not as much chocolate as you'd expect. For 80 euros you could buy a 250g pack of hand made chocolates and get one pack free, now call me common if you like but give me a 2 euro bar of salted nut chocolate from Inter Marche in Callac and I'd be happy. Anyway I digress, as we wandered around Brussels, we went up past the Royal Palace, complete with the obligatory park with a lake surrounded by kids playing pokemon. I say kids, it wasn't really it was kids, toddlers and Grannies all staring fixedly into their phones. It's a weird thing, all these people clearly are there with their friends, they've chosen to go out for the afternoon with them and as soon as they arrive they stop talking to each other and try to catch a snorlax or some other strangely named computer generated thing. Contrast this with what we found up past the EU commission buildings - there's another park up here with a monument celebrating the anniversary of the creation of the kingdom of Belgium (the British picked it's King - ironic really when we say that Brussels has undermined our sovereignty), at this other park there was a vast array of tents with all kinds of people around, some dressed as characters from Lord of the Rings, others just enjoying what turned out to be the Brussels Games Fair. The tents were packed with people (kids, toddlers & Grannies) playing board games, together, with each other,talking and laughing as they did so. I be prepared to bet an expensive 250g pack of chocolates that those at the games fair were having more fun than those sat by the lake!
After leaving the games fair we walked back towards the centre, found an enormous church that looks barely used (the catholic cathedral we later found out) looking for some food and drink. In doing so I think we ventured into the "pink" part of Brussels, now the only reason I think this is that on one of the walls was a life size mural of Tin Tin in a very friendly embrace with Captain Haddock - now I certainly don't remember that from "Herge's Adventures of Tin Tin". Anyhow we found a decent pub - there's not much I can say about Belgian beer that hasn't been said many times before, but after living on a diet of Keo, Carlsberg and Leon for the past year a pint of Leffe was like manna from heaven. I tried several others, as did Beccy (for future reference she likes the fruit ones) before continuing our wandering. We ended the day fairly tired, a little bit tiddly and much more impressed with Brussels than we'd expected to be - that said we've done it now - not sure we'd make a special trip to go back!

Sante