Brussels Adventure

Hello hello,

What a day that Jeff and I had today.

We started out with breakfast in our room before getting a map of the town centre from the front desk at the hotel.

Lucky for us, we werent far from the centre and a number of sites we wanted to see.

We headed out and the first thing we came across was a number of young guys running some event; one was a quiz about Brussels and the other was this giant basketball game (the basketball was half the size of me). Jeff and I were intrigued and did both, laughing at my poor basketball performance and our lack of Brussels knowledge (the guys humoured us and we all had a laugh). Apparently there were a number of sites set up through Brussels you could visit and once you had visited them all there was free food and drink. We thought that was neat but kept going to see the things on our list.

We then came across a street that had been closed down, music playing, food cooking and people handing out free struff. We are still not sure what that was about but it had something to do with the citys public transit system... the trains; trams and buses (we think). They were celebrating 10 years of something. We had a hot chocolate but it failed miserably in comparison with the one from Bruges yesterday.

Then we kept walking and found another festival, a folk festival. It reminded us of Oktoberfest back home, with booths set up with food and beer, tables set out for people to sit, music; people dressed in costume, etc. It was pretty wild and thoroughly enjoyable. I was having a ball :) The folk fest is just this weekend which is awesome because we got to participate. Jeff had a beer and sausage and I had an empanada.

We then visited the National Bank museum, the Royal Palace, the little boy peeing (google it... lol something to do with the nature of Brussels), a gorgeous and EXTREMELY old catherdral and then we bumped into another market/festival thing with tents set up and food being sold everywhere. They even brought sod in to cover the rough brick ground for people to lay on, as if in a park, lol

It was pretty amazing that everywhere we went today there was some big event going on. It did mean there were a lot of people, tourists and locals but it just added to the festive city. We sure lucked out today.

We bought way too expensive train tickets for tomorrow morning when we head to Cologne, Germany instead of taking the bus; we learned our lesson. Its just all so confusing.

Anyway, our bodies ache and we are hungry so its time to go find food; which may be difficult as its Sunday and most places appear closed... great.

Have a great rest of your weekend; you will hear from us in Germany.

:)