Brussels

This morning we had another great breakfast – omelets with veggies, spices and peppers. How I have missed spicy food. Crystal is craving Mexican and we have all so enjoyed the wonderful Indian food. We have again enjoyed such wonderful hospitality that is so much more than we expect. It was great to meet Ashwini and get to catch up with Ravi. After breakfast we packed up sandwiches for the road and said goodbye to our friends until we meet again.

Our drive to Brussels was a nice one through the countryside overlooking valleys and rivers. After we left we realized that we had three postcards to mail with German stamps on them! So, we stopped in a small town and after wandering lost with limited directions to the post office went in a gelato shop. No one there spoke English but after some limited conversation and pointing one of the locals said that he would mail them for me! The people here have been so lovely to us all the time.

Arriving in Brussels and locating Eva’s apartment was a little confusing, but we made it. Once there we happily left the car and went to find her place, but we couldn’t find the address. I ended up calling and shortly after she was hanging her head out of the window right over our heads!

Eva and I worked together at the Cuyahoga Valley Environmental Education Center and spent three seeks traveling together along with Bob in the western US. We were very close friends in Ohio, but it has been nine years since we last saw each toehr. Remarkably, it felt as if it could have been a matter of months rather than years.

We ate lunch and caught up at her apartment before walking down to the park near her house. At the east end of the park there is a beautiful three-arch monument. Within the park there are lovely lawns and also a car museum and an aircraft museum. Apparently in the area between the museum they have drive –in movies in August.

From the park we walked to the EU buildings where Eva works in the environmental division for Eastern European EU countries. The buildings are very large, modern offices that Eva is disgusted with as they look nothing like the glorious Brussels’s buildings with age, architecture and character. On the circle in front of the EU there was an Iranian protest going on and many people wearing green arm bands and speaking.

We hopped on the metro and headed downtown where we visited one of the largest buildings in Europe – the Belgian Palace of justice and shortly thereafter the city center where we window-shopped for incredible chocolates. Some of the are made with saffron, lavender, roses and other odd ingredients you might not expect. You can buy a box of chocolates representing flavors from around the world. Each country of origin is labeled in edible print on the chocolate. Some of thesee stores looked like jewelry stores in décor, uniform and ambiance. Fascinating!

We made our first real stop to try a Belgian beer at a corner café. I had cherry, Bob raspberry, Eva had peach and Crystal had a Duvel. The fruit beers are remarkably smooth, not sweet and extraordinarily fragrant.

After our beer we wandered through the narrow streets past an incredible garden and the building “Old England” a very famous example of a Belgian architectural style. Our next stop was for waffles. The waffles are very, very light and come with any topping you can imagine. I had fresh fruit, Eva strawberries and whipped cream, Crystal nutella, Bob had vanilla ice cream on his waffle. All delicious and all very much enjoyed.

From there we walked through the tiniest winding streets of restaurants I hav ever seen. Every restaurant has sidewalk tables but here is no sidewalk and the tables from one place nearly reach across the narrow street to the next one. The bonus here is that you can see everyone’s food up close and what each place is serving. There are a lot of mussels, prawns in the shell, fish and other seafood delights everywhere.

We popped out in the remarkable old town square and marveled at the expanse of the space and the unique old buildings. Every other August the square is covered in an intricate patterned flower blanket and people climb city hall to view it. Maybe next August we can see it for ourselves.

Our next stop was for the next Belgian specialty, fries – or rather frites. Fries are NOT French, they originated in Belgium and they take them very seriously. They fry them twice, once before you order them, a second time right before they are served. They are excellent and we did eat them with mayonnaise, as the locals do.

We also stopped to see the Mannekin Pis, a slightly ridiculous statue of a naked little boy peeing. Apparently it used to be a water fountain where you could drink from the stream. That would have been a little unnerving. These days he is dressed up in various costumes that change several times in once weekend. We unfortunately just missed him dressed for the start of the tour de France in the golden jersey. Darn!

Our next stop was in a very old bar that serves over 2000 different beers from all over the world. We sat around a large wine barrel that had been converted into a table and enjoyed more edible art in Brussels. I had a passion fruit beer that was so incredible the fragrance alone was delicious. We all sampled something different before picking up the next metro to Eva’s apartment and turning in.