Brussels Randomness

Looking back on the pictures from Brussels, there were alot of things that I think people need to stand back and take note of.

These ramps run in and out of every subway station. For a bit I thought they were like gutters, but then came to realize its so you can roll your bike up and down.

Condom vending machines. These were everywhere. Seriously what kind of problem does the city have that they need condoms readily accessible 24 hours a day on the streets of the business district?

This bar was right next to our hotel.  Isn't the guy in the logo the same as Elmer's?? 

Goodbye Belgium

Our last day in Brussels was a short one, but still had a few sights to see.

First was the Jubilee Park and the Triumphal Arch. Created to celebrate 50 years of Belgian independence in 1880.

Next we went to Brussels only remaining family brewery. Personally I would have expected in a country famous for beer there would have been much more but I guess it all comes down to the mighty InBev pushing all the local brewerys out. Anyway, we went to the Cantillon brewery. http://www.cantillon.be/br/3_1. Which only brews Lambic beer. Essentially, all of the CO2 escapes because it is aged in barrels, so it is a still beer. Think of beer wine and you would be pretty close to what it tasted like. Personally I was a fan, not sure how the rest of the crowd found it.

We made one last trip to the Grande Place for lunch and were off to the airport. As a final farewell to the city I polished off the last of my chocolate waffles while we were waiting for the bus.

I am not sure I got a good feel for Brussels while we were there, seemed to be one both ends of the spectrum for size a people all the time. While we got checked in and through security in about 10 minutes it took us 45 minutes to get through traffic to get to the airport. It was this type of small town/big city that kept throwing me off the whole trip.

Road Trip

More of a train trip I guess, but none the less left Brussels for Bruges and another day of sight seeing. Bruges is a special place because it wasn't heavily damaged during the way and still has most of it oldest buildings. Based on what we saw my guess is the tourist attractions around Europe would be quite different if it weren't for the war. The whole day felt like we were walking around a theme park or movie set. Everything super old and super cool.

As we stumbled into town, I was still hurting from the previous nights desert waffles and the mornings breakfast bonanza III, we heard a band and quite a bit of commotion. Just as we arrived the Assumption Day Parade was going by. We knew it was a national holiday, but didn't know anything about what was going on. I will leave it up to you to do your own Assumption Day research. No Sunday School today, sorry. The parade ended in the town square where we were dwarfed by the shadow of the. This is just one of three huge steples in the town. Must have taken some serious convincing after the first two to build the third. Seriously what town needs 3 huge spires? Either that or there were a lot of belgians with big egos who wanted a bigger one.

This lady looked like she could barely
hold her huge spear thingy

We took a BOAT RIDE!! Tour of the city which was cool, I couldn't help but wonder how many times the place had flooded, as the water came right up against the houses along the canal.

Kristen and Nicole had this Rick Steven's travel guide which they kept quoting from "Rick says this" or "Rick like that" took me half the day to figure out who the hell rick was. He did however lead us to a awesome waffle place. Before we ordered I told Kristen "just order something I will eat what you don't" she made some comment like "oh I am super hungry I will eat it all." Then she got handed this monster. So I ended up with my waffle and half of hers. Amateur!!

My sad plain waffle

Kristen's super waffle

The last real stop we made in town was the Church of Our Lady. Or course a huge tower, in fact the second tallest brickwork tower in the world, but the main attraction is Michaelangelo's Madonna. One of few of his works to ever make it out of Italy. Obviously the church must have know it was in Rick's book and that rich tourists were coming to look at it, because they were charging admission to see most of the church and the statue which they tried to block from view with a curtain and a tree. Well there was no hiding anything from Kristen and with the zoom lens on the camera we managed to sneak a peak.

More frites and waffles for dinner and dessert, and some more fruity beers and off to bed

Mini Europe

Today we managed to see all the sights of Europe at once, all at 1/25th scale!! Kristen found a place called Mini Europe, which was close to our real destination so we decided to visit and check it out. Honestly it was alot like the Lego Land cities that we saw before, but when you got up close and really looked at the details it was pretty impressive. Even down to the fat men sun bathing in their speedos.

Mini Europe from the air

Nicole made friends with the mascot



The Grande Place in Brussels in miniature and in real life

 

I took one for the team and posed in all
of the costumes

After our whirl wind tour of Europe, we made a quick trip half way around the world, and found a little slice of heaven. Wouldn't have guessed that we would find good Mexican (or at least better than that in London) in Belgium, but surprises everyday!!

From there we were on to the days highlight. The Atomium, was originally built for the 1958 World's Fair. Originally designed to stand for 6 months, clearly made an impression as its been 50+ years since originally built. Clearly they hadn't planned for the future, as there was no air conditioning, and was super hot inside.

Inside one of the escalators between pods

Riding the fastest elevator in Europe to the top pod

Taking a self portrait in my reflection.

Check out the statistics from the '58 World's Fair. (double click to enlarge) The one's at the bottom are the really interesting ones. Not sure why there were so many people giving birth there! And what is up with the suicides? Even if the 5 deaths were all successful suicides, that is a pretty sad success rate, 5 for 32, just sad!

Turns out that the creator of the Smurfs is Belgian. So with the movie coming out soon, there is smurf stuff everywhere. Wouldn't have thought that 'Smurf' was an American word, but clearly it translates differently in French and Dutch. 



Gummy Smurfs

To finish the day we visited the 'famous' frites restaurant the 'Maison Antione'. The key to frites is to fry the fries twice, and damn they were good. I couldn't bring myself to eat them with mayo but still they were great. Not sure how often I could eat them, as I nearly passed out trying to finish off my giant cone of fried goodness, but I can say that they lived up to their famous billing.