Belgium

After spending 9 wonderful hours in Paris, we caught a 10pm train to Brussels. The train was only about an hour long journey. We always tend to feel ambtious upon arriving to a new city - the whole ride there we anticipated hitting the town raging - going to pubs and eating waffles (this was our idea of Brussles before arriving) to our heart’s content all night long. However, when we actually got to our hotel, after wandering around the dodgy area near the station (never judge a city by the area surrrounding the station - it is always scary and gross), the exhaustion hit us like the train we rode in on. I showered, which was my first mistake as it had the opposite affect of waking me up, and before the lights were out, I was out like a light.
The next morning we awoke feeling slightly more rejuvinated, had a nice breakfast at our hotel and set out to explore Brussels. And literally, wow! I haden’t heard much of Brussles before - but I loved it. It’s a small city but so lovely and charming. Millions of Belgium chocoloate shops, pubs and restaurants with mussles and french fries as the main dish, lined the narrow, cobble stone streets, and the main plaza, gran plaz, sat in the middle of the tiny city, big and pretty with bright gold trim around all the magnificant structures. Next to it, a busy farmers market was held in another plaza. We saw the Manekin Pis - a small statue of a boy peeing. I was more interested in the chocolate shops around it which served little chocolate samples. Sean and I continued to walk into different shops in hopes of getting a little taste of the rich chocolate, usually we were successful too. The waffles in Belgium are significantly the best in the world. We ordered one with strawberries and whipped cream while walking around and then another one came complimentary with our lunch, this time with chocolate syrup and whipped cream. Seriously though, I am not sure what they put in these things but the sweetness, the soft, warm, buttery taste fills your mouth with pleaure and delight from the first bite to the last... it really was an experience. We treated ourselves with lunch at a nice restaurant in one of the livelier parts of town, Sean had the mussles and frites (french fries) which is another of the many things Brussles is famous for. I admired him for ordering this sort of thing, as seafood (particularly mussles) has never appealed to me. Instead, I ordered something more ordinary, like chicken flavored to perfection and topped it off with a beer framboise (rhaspberry), which was delicious with its sweet, fruity beer taste. After lunch we decided it was time to go to Amsterdam. We slowly strolled back to our hotel to pick up our things and then a short walk to the train station, which was actually a huge effort as my backpack weighs me down enormously (it’s only 30 lbs, confirmed at the airport in Amsterdam, but it still hurts!). At one point I put it on Sean’s skateboard and dragged it to the station, which seemed to slow us down more, but I was in a lot less pain.We hopped on the next train out there and 3 hours later (we took the slow train) we arrived at dusk.