woodst-wanderers: Off to Brussels

Karl Off to Brussels in Belgium

Brussels for two days, one day of work and one of being a tourist.

One great thing about Belgium – the beer! Another great thing about Belgium (if you like em), the waffles. See pics!

Anyway, started out on another walking mission to see the centre of the city. My hotel was perfectly located right by the EU parliament, so swung by there on the way first – very flash modern building and huge! Lots of military around patrolling with their machine guns in full view.

Found a sports store to buy a pair of sneakers, well that was an experience as the shop assistant didn’t speak English, and my level of French is not up to discussing shoe sizes, but we got there!

Wandered down past the back of the royal palace and down to Grand Place, which started out as a market place in the 13^th century. The buildings are absolutely amazing, I sat and had a coffee and admired the buildings and people watched.

Then on to the next amazing tourist destination (or so they said), a statue of a little boy having a pee (called the manakin pis). Apparently the heads of states that visit bring clothes for it in their national colours occasional for the statue to wear. Pretty disappointing statue if you ask me….but it was only a couple of blocks from Grand Place so not too far out of the way.

Then slowly made my way back through the maze of little streets, selling tourist stuff and waffles, had some Belgian fries, very yummy, and took photos of theatres and shopping malls before finally making my way back to the Royal Palace.

Back at the hotel I noted I had clocked up another 12.5 ks walking, so it was down to the bar to wait for my taxi and have another Belgian beer J