Belgium

So we left the Netherlands and went to Belgium. My main comment about that country? Waffles. That is all anyone needs to know about Belgium. I thoroughly enjoyed them plain, with chocolate, and with strawberries.

Our first stop was in a very cool little town called Brugge. Belgium is known for it's lace and chocolate, so of course people spent what little time we had there shopping for lace and chocolate. I am not so much a shopper, so I walked and walked and walked and just explored the cool side-streets. They were little narrow cobblestone streets with old building all around, and towards the back near the river/canal (I never really know the difference) we found a lace sewing factory place and some huge windmills. In our explorations we also ran across a church with a crowd of people around it, so of course we thought there must be something cool at this church and we went up to check it out. We joined in with the crowd but then a bride and groom exited the church and everyone around us started to clap...turns out we'd ended up in the middle of a wedding party with our cameras out and backpacks on. Needless to say we did not blend in. We tried to back slowly out of the group to avoid bothering them anymore than we already had, but it turned out that they were all going the same direction we were. So there we were (one friend had her giant, digital, SLR camera hanging around her neck) walking down the street with this wedding party as they were on their way to a pub for some sort of afterparty. We felt slightly like stalkers or paparazzi but the bride didn't seem to notice us so it was alright. The rest of the group didn't seem to mind the dumb American girls too much either.

After leaving Brugge, which we LOVED, we arrived in Brussels. Our bus driver had to take the back way in for some reason, so we drove through what felt like murder city and when we arrived at our hotel there was a fight going on near the entrance. It was not the best welcome and that definitely tainted our view of the place. The hotel was nice but had a strange style of decor....pictures of moldy food adorned the halls and the lobby. Seeing a giant picture of a moldy orange (see left) is not exactly what you want to look at as you're on your way to breakfast.

Despite our first impressions of the city, we did decide to explore the next day. So, after meeting with panel of expatriots working in Brussels, we went down to the main square and changed our minds, at least slightly, about Brussels. A big group of us started at the main plaza and then made our way to what is apparently Brussels' most famous tourist attraction.

It's title sort of speaks for itself...it's called Manneken-pis. We heard two different stories explaining the title: One was that some important building caught on fire, so this little boy tried to do his part to put it out by relieving himself on it. The second story is that relieving yourself in public is illegal in Brussels, but one little boy disobeyed and was found making designs on a wall. Well, a witch came up to him, and as punishment, turned him into stone. Whatever the story...there is a statue of a little boy creating a fountain of water. Strange thing to have as the main tourist attraction in your city, very strange. Kind of typical of my experience in Brussels though...something's a little off. We heard there was a girl version of the statue somewhere too but didn't look to hard for it.

Beyond eating waffles probably the funnest thing we did in Brussels was laundry. About ten of us walked around the corner to the laundromat, struggled mightily trying to figure out the system and which detergent to use, received assistance from the non-English speaking owner, and just sat and talked in there until we had nice clean laundry. It was a fun hangout and it was wonderful to have clean clothes again.

That was a long summary of Belgium...but I will say again, all you need to know is waffles. Next up, the best city in the world, Paris!