Brussels Without the Sprouts

Although technically I’ve been to Belgium before, I never visited Brussels and knew nothing about it. Karlo explained that it is the capital of Europe and the financial hub of the region. That didn’t sound all that thrilling to me, but then I thought harder about Belgium and remembered that it’s famous for chocolate, waffles, and beer and suddenly is sounded more appealing.

We couldn’t have gotten any luckier with booking a hotel attached to the airport and having the train station right under the airport, just a few hundred feet from the hotel front door. It was perfect. We spent the whole day walking around the city. We found the area known as the “Grand Place” and there was plenty of action going on there. This is supposedly the biggest and most beautiful square in all of Europe. It reminded me of Saint Peter’s Square in Venice, only without all the pesky pigeons.

We had to practice some serious self control strolling through the adorable little shops because every third one was a gourmet chocolatier - decadent Belgian chocolate everywhere! Very dangerous. I had to put Karlo on a leash to control him.



There was a huge parade while we were there and we somehow lucked out with front row viewing. I had a ball taking pictures of the very strange people in the parade. Finally, I get brave enough to take some pictures of people!

I still wish we had the slightest clue what that parade was all about. Sometimes it gets frustrating to struggle with the language barriers of traveling to Europe. but it was still fun to just take it all in. We watched the parade for over an hour, until my feet started to burn and my head started to pound. That’s when we bailed in search of food and drink. And there was no shortage of that. Restaurants lined the tiny alleys and we found a place to rest our weary feet and fill our empty tummies. As it turns out we sat next to a guy from Ohio and chatted about the joys of business travel.

After our meal we tried to walk some of it off by touring more of the city. We were in search of a huge park and I'm still not sure how we were unable to find it considering we had a map of the city. The streets were insanely confusing and we ended up going in circles several times. But it gave me a chance to see some really neat buildings and churches, in lieu of the park.


We were very proud of ourselves for figuring out the trains at “Grand Central Station” and making our way back to the hotel on the first try. It was still early in the night, but we were exhausted so we bought some Belgian beers and desserts in the market and had a picnic in our room.

It didn’t take more than half of that very strong beer before I passed out. ZZZZZZZ

To see more pictures from Brussels please click here.