Brussels

Belgium sign. It's in French.

A few days ago, one of our homeschool friends posted that she was going to Brussels this weekend, because of the famous flower carpet. What famous flower carpet, you might say? This one, of course - Brussels Flower Carpet. Don't worry, I had to look it up as well. Basically, some guy really liked begonias and decided to make giant Oriental carpet works of art out of them. They only do it every other year, and only for one weekend. I thought it sounded pretty neat, plus, it was an excuse to go to Brussels for a day. Brussels wasn't on my "list" of places to go, but it's only a few hours, and we had only been to Belgium that once for like 10 minutes. So, we went. They were going to leave their house around 9:00am, but we wanted to leave early, so we could have a full day and not feel a need to go back because we had missed something. I didn't have a list of things to see in Brussels, so I doubted that would be the case, but you never know. We said we would meet them around lunchtime for some frites (fries) and waffles. Em didn't know we were meeting them, though. Just in case something went wrong, I didn't want her to be disappointed.

The clock

The first adventure was crossing the border. It wasn't the border we had expected. Instead of a sign saying "Belgie", we hit one that said "Die Nederlander". We had no idea that we had to cross the Netherlands to get to Belgium. So, we looked at signs in Dutch for a little while. Then, we hit Belgium. I got a very fuzzy picture of the sign, sorry about that. Anyway, we arrived and found parking and came out into daylight. We were fortunate to park right by a cool clock, and to come up out of the structure just as it was ringing. It actually goes over the road.

Meet James Ensor, Belgium's famous painter!

After some directional confusion, we headed down the way we thought it would be to see the flower carpet. It's right in the main square, so we felt sure we could find it. (A side note - while I have been lucky with free iPhone apps for other cities, all the ones for Belgium required internet access, so we couldn't use them). We were really hungry by this time, but I really wanted to find the flower carpet, since that's where we were supposed to meet our friends. I figured once we got our bearings, we could find some lunch. We saw a frites place on the way, but the line was too long. We wandered around in street markets and along streets until we found the carpet. It's huge!

We found a relatively large chocolate place at what looked to be the quieter end, and thought that would be a good place to meet them. So, we moved on to find some lunch. Em really wanted waffles (they smelled heavenly), so I had to tell her that we were meeting her friends, and we'd all get waffles together. I didn't tell her who, though, so that was still a surprise. We had wandered through some pretty ritzy restaurants, and that's not what we wanted. So, we decided to head back towards the frites place we had seen originally. Trouble is, we didn't know exactly where that was. But, luckily, we went right up a street littered with little cafe-type places with seating on the sidewalk. So, we stopped at a gyro place. The gyros were really yummy, but they contained fries! It was so unusual!

The waffle place. Note Obama

Right as we were finishing our lunch, we got a text that our friends were there. We said we'd meet them at the chocolate shop at the end of the flower carpet in about 20 minutes. We got there in about 10, so we waited a few minutes. I got another text saying they were at Godiva, but they didn't see us. Godiva? I had no idea where Godiva was. She said it was at the end of the flower carpet. It must have been at the other end. Sure enough. We were in Belgium, we should have expected multiple chocolate shops, right? We did eventually find them, and Em was thrilled. We set off to find frites and waffles. Corie (the mom) had a special waffle shop she wanted to go to, but she couldn't remember exactly where it was. So, we wandered. Max was starting to get a bit frustrated as we passed waffle shop after waffle shop. The ones she knew were cheaper. We wandered some more. Finally, we found it. It wasn't open yet. The lady said she was just setting up, it would be about 30 minutes. Grr. Since they hadn't eaten yet, we stopped at a frites shop near the waffle shop. Max got a bit more frustrated, and I started to get stressed that he was frustrated. At last, the waffle shop opened. We headed back over there for our waffles. Oh, they were worth the wait. Normally, I'm not a big fan of what Americans call Belgian waffles. What we ate though, were divine. The waffle had a beautiful texture, and it was smothered in chocolate. Max got one with bananas and whipped cram, and Em got one with strawberries & whipped cream, but mine was plain chocolate. Beautiful.

Em had almost finished her waffle when the other girls got theirs

After our waffles, we headed back to the flower carpet. There were two balconies that you could use to view the carpet. The one at the city hall was 3€ per adult with kids free, and the other was at the city museum, where you had to pay to get into the museum and an additional 1.50€ for the balcony. For us, it ended up only being like 6€ more for the museum, and it had the additional benefits of being less crowded on the balcony and without a line to get in. Plus, I always love a good museum. For our friends, though, it would have been significantly more for the museum, so we parted ways.

From the balcony at the museum

One of the things we had learned about Brussels is that there is a famous fountain of a little boy peeing - Manneken Pis. You can see the story here - Manneken Pis. One of the things they like to do with the statue is to dress him up in various costumes. He has something like 800 costumes. In the city museum, they have a bunch of them on display. We were able to surreptitiously get pictures of a couple of them.

His Obama costume

Manneken Pis himself

After the museum, we went to go see the actual statue. It was OK. The thing that got me was the escargots stand across the street. I also very much enjoyed the chocolate shop where we stopped on the corner.

Mmm... snails from a street vendor...

His Tour de France costume

After that, we hopped on the City Sightseeing tour bus. We have enjoyed those tours in other cities, and figured it would be a good way to see the highlights of the city. We saw some pretty churches (including another Notre Dame - my aim is to see as many Notre Dames as possible. Before moving here, I had no idea there was more than one) and some pretty scenery. We stopped at a street market and saw some very interesting things.

Notre Dame

Some scary antiques!

Scary things. We then got back on the bus out towards the Atomium and Mini Europe, which are both on the outskirts of town, and way to far to walk.

The Atomium

The Atomium was built for Expo '58, and very much looks like a 50's view of the future from the outside. We didn't go inside, because we were running out of time before the bus was going to stop running, and Max really wanted to go to Mini-Europe. The Atomium doesn't look like much in pictures, but it's actually quite impressive. Mini-Europe was fun. It has famous landmarks from all over the EU done in 1:25. It was fun to see some of the places we've been, and some of the places we hope to go in the future. They even had a miniature Brussels with a miniature flower carpet. :)

I think he's peeing mayo

After that, we headed back into town. We finally got to a part of town we recognized and decided to get out and have something to eat. We weren't starving, but knew we'd be hungry before we got home, and we had no idea whether or not we'd find an open place to eat on the way home. It's not like in the US, where you can always find a McDonalds or a Denny's open by the freeway. You have to take your food where you can find it if you're going between cities. So, we stopped at Manneken Frites, which we had seen earlier. Of course, since we were in Belgium, we had to have our frites with mayonnaise, right? It's actually pretty good. Their mayo is much more flavorful than the stuff we get in the US.  The frites are served with little forks, so I had to pretend to be all prissy, eating my fries with a fork.

Prissy fries

Then we headed home. It was a fun day. :)