UNIV 4940: day 2 in brussels

so we had a great second day. great. the sun came out, but don’t let that fool you. it was much colder today than yesterday! but we saw so much today, considering we didn’t get out of bed until 11:30! seriously, we were so exhausted we were in bed until 11:30. now i know what you’re thinking, what could you possibly see in a couple of hours? let me tell you….

the indoor shopping street

there was some asian exhibit. it looked cool

the coolest trees ever.

we left at around 12:30 and headed in the general direction of what we thought we wanted to see. on our way we ran into the indoor shopping street, which was high on my list of things to visit. it was beautiful! this spat us out into a square in front of a church where we ordered lunch to-go. i ordered a prosciutto panini with a cappuccino, mmm. the plan from there was to see the palace, so when we spotted a group of elementary kids on a field trip, we decided to follow them. they looked like they knew where they were going, right? after about 5 min we realized this was the best decision! we ran straight into the royal palace. jackpot! inside, we were able to explore the history of belgium and the royal family, since the entire palace is not open year round (ugh…).

the palace

comic room

belgium and world war II

outside of the palace was an enormous park called parc de bruxelles. it had interesting trees that looked very similar to the weeping willow from harry potter. once finished with the palace, we knew that we wanted to make it to the cantillon brewery and museum. it was around 3pm and we needed to make it across town because they closed at 5. so we kicked it in to high gear…..

"weeping willow" trees

….until we found the place du petit sablon klein zavel. i don’t know what that means or says, but it was the prettiest/smallest garden with a giant fountain. we explored this for a while and took multiple pictures there before we were back on track for the brewery once again.

the beautiful park

the fountain

now let me tell you something. brussels is not on a grid system, and it’s not like the united states here. sometimes streets have street signs, sometimes not. and they’re always located on the buildings, not street corners. it’s tricky. but somehow i mastered the map. you can ask heather, cydney, or lauren, because i know you don’t believe me. but i got us there! at 4:20! perfect amount of time to take in the entire brewery museum and have our free tasting of the original cantillon beer, and the fruit flavored kind (we all voted that the original was much better).

me with barrels of beer

the inside of the brewery museum

from there, since the sun was setting and we were a million blocks away from home, we took the subway! how proud are you? we took the subway, in brussels, successfully.

heather, lauren, cydney in the subway ("tram") station

after all of this action, we got ready for dinner in the hostel and decided that the section called “a million tourists” looked like a good place to find dinner. if you didn’t know already, belgium is famous for their mussels (along with chocolate, a little boy peeing, and comic books). so we headed toward this area with high hopes because it said “inexpensive seafood.” boy were we not prepared for what happened next.

picture of the ridiculous food displays outside of the restaurants

the streets are literally the smallest streets in the world with restaurants on BOTH sides with displays of clams, mussels, oysters on some tables outside of the doors. sounds amazing, right? no. men who work in these restaurants literally stand outside the doors and wait for young, pretty women (like us) to come along so that they can harass us. they will say anything to get you to come eat at their restaurant. probably every single one promised to marry us and make us the happiest women alive. no thank you. we ran away and ended up at a kebob fast-food place! this is where i enjoyed my first-ever giant kebab/sandwich thing. it was way better than any of those places in the lobster area.