Beer Planet!

April 2, 2010

Our plan was to get up at 9am to get a start on the day. Problem. I set my alarm for 9, but again had forgotten that Brussels is an hour ahead of London so my clock wasn't set correctly. Hilary's clock went off at 9 but she turned it off when I didn't get up. Mine went off at 10 (but I thought it was 9) and saw that she was still asleep so I didn't get up right away either. I finally got out of bed at what I thought was 10:15am and got on the computer to catch up on life at home. A few minutes in to it I looked down at Kevin's computer time and saw that it said 11:29am. Whoops. It was really late and Hilary was still asleep. Another morning wasted. Hilary got up, we showered and ended up leaving the place around 1pm. I've never been a morning person but I thought I'd be able to adjust pretty easily once I was here. Turns out constantly walking and staying up until 2am doesn't mix well with wanted to get up early to walk around a new city. Luckily, it stays light until 8:30pm here -- which we discovered while waiting for Kevin yesterday.

We left Kevin's place with the single intention of finding scrumptious Belgium Waffles to fill our stomachs with. About a block after leaving Kevin's place a couple of guys round the corner and one of them sees me and starts saying something in French. No idea what he is saying and it is obviously a question I shrug my shoulders and say "No". The other boys laugh and they walk away. Completely confused I ask Hilary what just happened and she said she isn't really sure but she picked up the work 'friend.' Love getting hit on less than 5 minutes into walking around Brussels alone, haha.

After taking the metro to the city center, buying a metro pass for the week, walking around the city center pretty aimlessly and seeing a McDonalds, Subway, and Pizza Hut (seriously, way to go American fast food for invading Europe) we found a place that smelled and looked like it could satisfy our craving. We both got the waffles with ice cream and hot chocolate sauce. It was everything a Belgium waffle should be and more. I cannot stress enough how delicious this things smell though. Open street vendors sell them all over the place so we are constantly smelling it as we walk around the city. There's a good chance my jeans are going to fit again by the time I leave this place between the waffles and the beer. But I am 100% okay with this happening. Completely worth it.

There was a shoe shop across the street that Hilary had been looking at the entire time we were eating, she's a big shoe girl, so we stopped in there after eating. It was called Sacha and prided itself on combining shoes and art. The shoes (and purses!) in there were really cool. There was a pair of purple boots and multicolored heels that I would totally get if I had the money and/or room to pack them. But I have neither so I just enviously gazed at them.

Our next goal was to find a city map. We had no idea where anything was and I was the one who was supposed to research this country and my researching skills and motivation were not up to par with Hilary's London accomplishment. I'm just not one who likes to plan a lot when I travel. I think it is more fun to go with the flow, enjoy the people and scenery and get lost a lot. :) It's the things that you don't plan for that usually end up being the more rewarding. Buuuut even with this view we figured it would be best to find a map and at least know where we were at any given moment.

While on our search we happened across our best discover yet. Beer Planet! Oh my god. This place was my heaven and a half. Yes, I added a half to heaven. The two men who were working there (I think they were the owners) were super nice and really helpful. It was really overwhelming so we asked for their recommendations and are excited to drink our hopefully tasty beers very soon. I also found the sweetest shot glass in the shape of a boot ever! Seriously, what is better than a tiny shot glass shaped boot? That's right, nothing. So country #2 is now added to my shot glass collection.

We spent a good amount of time at this shop and ended up getting pictures and the owner asked us if he could take our picture and put us up on their website. We happily obliged like giddy schoolgirls and posed for the owner. The website is www.beerplanet.eu no idea when it will go up on their website, but it is supposed to be under the "happy customer" section. Because happy customers we were! I'm pretty sure we're going to end up back at that shop again before we leave. They also had a free map of the city which they gave us that absolutely saved us from being completely lost tourists. Those guys are on my new favorite people list.

After we left with our new goodies we headed toward the Royal Palace to see what was around there. We happened by the St. Catherine Church and some pretty sweet park chairs. We were more interested in the chairs than the church sadly and asked a lady to take a picture of us in them. She was a little confused when we tried to explain we wanted pictures of us in the chairs and not in front of the church. It's the little things in life... :) There were also bottle caps in the dirt all around us that had been smashed in to the ground and looked really cool. Just another reminder that Europe is way better than the states cause they can drink outside and in front of churches.

We did go in to the church and it was pretty much what you would expect a big European church to look like. The one exception was that there wer paintings all around of different religious things. The signs were in Dutch and French so I couldn't look at them so I don't really know what they are except for the few things I could recognize from going to Catholic school for 9 years -- which was surprisingly little, ha, whoops. But the paintings themselves were surprising because they seemed really modern. They weren't ancient and detailed oriented like you see in most churches. It was cool to see something a little different. The other thing I noticed about the paintings is that a lot of them were faceless. There either wasn't a head painted where their should have been, or a head and no face, or a face but the person's hands were covering most of it. I'm not sure if the reasoning behind this was explained in the signs next to them, but it seemed weirdly negative to be in a church. It almost seemed as if it was making some statement about the faceless people behind the religion. Being able to read would have probably helped a lot. The last thing about this church was that there were donation centers set up around it. One was for the poor, one was for the restoration of the church and one was for the upkeep of the church. I thought it was interesting that you could choose which area you want to donate to.

After that we actually headed to the Royal Palace. We had driven past it the night before so we knew what it looked like but their was an entire square involved in it so we thought we'd check it out. Kevin told us that if the Belgium flag was raised at the top of the palace it meant the king was home. The flag was raised so that was cool. I don't know how often he is home or not, but I like to think he was specially their just for us. :) There wasn't much in this area so we headed to the Grand Place which is the major square of the city, especially for tourists.

Random note, but the parking meters here are exactly like the ones in Seattle. Very unexpected. Something I could actually operate! If I had a car or any need to pay for parking... sigh.

At the Grand Place we walked around and saw all the different sights, a market, a really cool clock on the side of a random building and a lot of tourists. At one point we made it in to a store called the Chocopolis. My oh my this place is a chocolate lovers dream -- my mom and Uncle Jack would looooove it! So much delicious chocolate. We were able to have a taste and it was so good I didn't want to eat anything the rest of the day just so that taste could linger longer, and I'm not even that big of a chocolate person. There are demonstrations on how they make the chocolate everyday but we had gotten their too late to see them. So we are going to hopefully go back tomorrow and buy some chocolate. They are 0.60 euros per piece which is around a $1 each. A little pricey but good enough that I want to get a few pieces.

Our next stop was the Manneken Pis, also known as the pissing boy. This is apparently a very famous statue in the city of a naked little boy pissing into a pond. Why this is so famous I have no idea, it just is. We made our way there not knowing what to expect but being more than a little surprised when we got there. I didn't even see it at first, Hilary had to get my attention as to where it was. I was expected some big statue but it the boy was in fact only about a foot tall on top of a 6 foot tall wall. There were a lot of tourists around so we figured this must be the right place. We were a little disappointed and confused at why this is such a big deal, but did the correct tourist thing and took a picture in front of it anyways. Apparently there are occasions where the city dresses it up in different outfits. If you are lucky enough to see it on one of these days it actually pisses beer instead of water. Probably the funniest thing I've ever heard. Gotta like a city that prides itself on pissing statues.

At this point it was around 7 so we decided to head back to Kevin's for dinner. We ate out a lot in London and spent way to much money in a city that doesn't even have that good of food so we are going to try to be a lot better about grocery shopping here. After stopping at the grocery store we went back to his place to enjoy our food and beer. Hilary also wanted to call her boyfriend Jon since she hadn't talked to him since our 3rd day here. Oh to have a boyfriend to check in on back home... I can only imagine that feeling. I won't lie. I don't mind not knowing what the feels like. ;) Haha. I'm sure none of you reading this are surprised by that though.

Anyways, she just got off the phone after an extended conversation which gave me time to write up this entire blog. We are now off to an Easter party another CouchSurfer we have been in contact with over here is hosting. It sounds like it is going to be a lot of fun so here's hoping it pans out that way. First step is trying to find it...