Brussels!.... Moules, Frites, Beer... and some other stuff too

In Brussels, we had to walk several blocks from the metro stop to our hotel, and for whatever reason I was leading the family… Until the rest of the family and Acacia passed up a waffle truck. Of course I had to stop, so I just kind of hung back and ordered one of the best waffles of my life while the family pressed on like a herd of tourists wheeling luggage down a busy sidewalk and being very clearly American. Finally I caught up with everyone and shared my waffle, which everyone agreed we needed more of, and, fortunately, waffle trucks were abundant so we remedied that dilemma. Then, as we continued down the sidewalk, we passed a guy serving some pre-packaged iced coffee drink for free as a promotion. This time everyone had learned, and we all stopped for some of these drinks. And continue down the sidewalk we did, until somebody noticed we were walking down the wrong road, courtesy of my directions, so had to head back to the metro station, past the waffle trucks and the coffee dude, and about 20 minutes later arrived at our hotel a bit hot and sweaty from our journey.

Is that beer I see in the hotel reception? Why yes, yes it is. A couple beers later and we were ready to carry our stuff up to the 4^th floor where our room was.   

We rested at the hotel for a bit, and then had to head out to meet Jennifer and Jim at the main square in Brussels since they had also come for my mom’s birthday dinner later that evening. That meant getting to dress up! All those clothes that we had purchased in Santa Cruz and Paris we finally got to wear. Although I guess Acacia just wore Cali’s dress (thanks Cali! Very classy indeed).

Finding Jennifer and Jim was more difficult than it sounded. The entire square was pretty much blocked off with fences and bleachers because there was some kind of jousting competition that was happening in the square that weekend. Anyway, we found them and then walked towards one end of the square that had these huge statues for the jousting competition. But they weren’t just statues, they were like giant mascots, similar to a Chinese dragon, but just huge medieval dressed people. So, we could go inside of them, and that I did. While everybody else was taking pictures with them, I squeezed into one and stuck my head out. Right around the crotch region, so it kind of looked like the statue was giving birth to me. A bit creepy in retrospect.

Anyway, from the statues we walked over to the fancy restaurant where we were eating birthday dinner! Stoked! We sat down and immediately ordered several bottles of the house wine (not still bubbling this time), and I ordered beer. Not that the wine was bad or anything, but wine in South America is decent. The beer is not. So I was still in beer relapse mode. Like I always am? Anyway, dinner was fun. Too much to drink. More moules and frites, this time some people ordered garlic sauce, some with a red curry sauce. Both were incredible. And HUGE! Acacia nor Tina (but I did eat more than Tina) finished their meals. My dad and I had to help.  Also, desserts. Amazing! Some kind of decadent chocolate cake, and also a crème brulee type thing.

By the time we had left dinner I think everyone was feeling pretty good. We walked through downtown Brussels some more, which included going by tourist alley which was full of restaurants and their waiters beckoning us to eat at their restaurants. After going through that gauntlet we headed to this glass covered walkway/atrium with a ton of gift shops, many of them selling chocolates. Obviously we stopped and got chocolates at more than one store.

When we got back to the hotel I think there may have been some more beer involved and some cards with dad, Acacia, and I. (Sidenote, this is the night that Brodie and Diane decided to have Tina sleep in the bathroom because she was sick or something, haha)

The next morning I was not the first one up, only sort of surprisingly, but found my mom already down in the dining area. Breakfast was fantastic. Buffet of chocolate croissants, other great pastries, eggs, thick cut bacon, tomatoes, breads, cheeses,  good coffee (still very much a novelty in South America), orange juice as well as some kind of multivitamin juice, and some yogurts and things. It was a late morning.

That day, there were some big plans. We had to see a statue of a peeing boy, Manneken Pis, eat some waffles, see a couple museums, drink some beer, eat some more waffles, and have fries. I guess the hardest thing of the day was actually dealing with metro transport, which is actually more difficult than one might suspect. Its nearly a guarantee that someone forgets their metro ticket, usually me or Diane, it takes a few minutes of arguing to decide which line and direction to get on, and then we have to make sure that mom doesn’t get left behind at the station or on the train, which dad usually likes to test mom by not getting off the train until the last possible moment, pushing the boundaries for not leaving someone behind.

When we got downtown, the first step was to find Manneken Pis. There’s statues of Manneken Pis all over, but they are the fake ones. Like Manneken Pis eating a waffle, or just copies as souvenirs in store fronts, so by the time we actually got to Manneken Pis, it was a bit underwhelming. Especially because all the fake ones we saw were bigger, and you could approach them for photos.

The upcoming order of events are debatable. Keep that in mind…

After the peeing boy, I think we bought some truffles. I am pretty sure this was the super fancy shop. And then ate all of them in the street, with Joe ensuring they were dished out fairly (with one more for him for all that effort, right?). Then we struggled, like we did with the peeing boy, to find the beer museum. We had the address and were familiar with street, but we(I asked because everybody else was too lazy—or because nobody was as excited as John. Especially Priscilla) still had to ask at two restaurants, which were pretty much across from it, before we arrived. There was a short video, a few displays, and a free (with admission) beer. We learned something… something like a type of beer that was both top and bottom fermentation, or something about open and closed fermentation ? We are both sure it has to do with fermentation, though, so that’s something.  I’m pretty sure it was like a half sour beer with half wild and half domestic yeast. In any case, something about the yeast and beer making process, and some combo of two normal things.

After the beer museum we may or may not have gone to Delirium, the place that holds the record of amount of beers sold in one place. Turns out, there are loads of Deliriums. The one we ended up with had a sampler of 6 or 7 Belgians, which Joe, John, and I ordered and Tina and Brodie split, while Priscilla and Diane chose to continue their beer education in a more mild form (coconut beer anyone?). Joe, being the responsible parent he is, made sure to go buy some French fries so we wouldn’t get too drunk, or so hunger complaints would stop, right Tina?

The beer sample wasn’t just a beer sample though, it was like the “Delirium’s strongest beers on the menu, and 6 or 7 of them.” And they were only samples by Belgian standards. Like Full pint glasses of these suckers. It was definitely a lot of really good beer. And the fries were pretty good too(John secretly likes potatoes, but won’t admit it). While we were drinking, a group of around 15 Spaniards all sat down at the table near us. Each of them ordered a liter of beer, and then proceeded to sing. A lot of singing. And they were loud and enthusiastic, and knew about a dozen songs that they all knew by heart complete with cheers at appropriate times and everything. My mom, being my mom, wanted to compete/join in and so wanted all of us to sing a song. Apparently I missed out about some serious part of my college education, or Americans are just lame in this respect, but nobody could think of a single drinking song and we all just kind of stared at this group of Catalonian teens singing and cheering and drinking.

Since they only had a liter each, they left long before we did. And on the menu was some other beer we had to try, so on top of our sampler, we each had another pint of some other high percentage beer. By the time we left, Acacia, Dad, and I had the drunchies. So, fries and beer, what next? When in Rome…Waffles! A lot of them. And this time not just plain waffles, but one with nutella, one with strawberries and chocolate, coconut on another, and a couple others smothered in sweet sugary goodness. Of course, we didn’t order 7 waffles, because that would have been too much. But since it wasn’t a waffle per person, there was like a drunk eating race to get the most waffle each person could. Add to this the fact that the plastic fork on a paper tray makes taking bites of the waffle a difficult affair, and we had a pretty messy challenge on our hands.I think it might have ended with me being stoked I won the rest of the waffle… mostly because nobody wanted any more, and then I dropped it nutella side down.

After this massive day-drunk fest, I am pretty sure we all went home and napped. Pretty sure…. Then we woke up for dinner, of course. The night before Joe had seen a lobster place on our post-dinner walk, so that’s where we ended up. Lobster bib and all.

The next day we had the same giant breakfast, SO different from the places that include breakfast in south America- bread and instant coffee if you’re lucky. Maybe some jam or butter for your cold bread. And then headed off to see the giant iron molecule! (The Atomium) With a little help from Wikipedia… it was constructed in 1958 for the world’s fair. You could take an elevator to the top, which made me quite motion sick, and then had a view of “little Europe” a theme- park like attraction next door, as well as the skyline of the city. I was most impressed because the tallest tree in the world (Hyperion, a coast redwood) is still taller than we were at 102m.

It was definitely a strange place. There was a big sign out front that we saw a bunch of little kids climbing on for pictures. Naturally, we followed suit. Also, once we had ascended and come back down from the giant iron molecule (not really a molecule per se, but a unit cell of an iron crystalline structure), a few of us were up for beer already. However, while they sold beer at Atomiom, we decided instead we would head back towards downtown to find pizza, go to a comic strip museum, and then get beer and THE Delirium(The order of these events were quite controversial). Fortunately on the way back, the metro only went one direction since we were at the end of the line, which made it pretty simple to figure out which train to get on, but the number of stops increased significantly which made getting off more difficult.

Anyway, we got off at the right stop. But, apparently siesta isn’t just a thing in south America. As soon as we got off the metro, everyone kept their eyes peeled for pizza. Bingo! Found one. Walking in all stoked and get to the door, but the host tells us they’re closed. No big deal, just find another one. Only a couple  blocks away, and the pizza looked better anyway, at least the ones on the tables of the people already eating there. Unfortunately their kitchen was closed. And another, and another. I think 5 places in total. Well dam(n). We ended up finding the comic strip museum, and thankfully they had a restaurant. Otherwise we probably would have died from lack of food since we had only had about 3,000 calories each for breakfast. Ate there, and then entered the museum. This wasn’t a forgettable meal, though, for the meat-eaters. We were splitting pasta dishes and salads.There was a veg pasta, but also two jumbo carbonara. And jumbo was jumbo. Probably a kilo and a half of the fattiest, artery clogging, pasta you’ve ever tasted. And there were 3 of them on the table. Needless to say, we finished all of them. Now, none of us are big comic strip people. But, especially not big Belgian comic strip people. It was interesting, we learned about who influenced who, and why, and how the first comics turned into cartoons. And there were a few life size statues of famous characters. Interesting, but I don’t think any of us were devastated about leaving to go find the right Delirium when the time came.

The first one we found, turned out to be their vodka bar (but also their monastery and Trappist beer bar?), which was pretty empty (it still had way more beers on their menu than the average American/Canadian bar… ) Luckily, we were tempted into a repeat of the day before and were quickly redirected to the basement bar that was packed mid-day. The menu was magazine huge and labeled with some sticker that said something like please don’t steal the menu. Foiled! I saw La Fin du Monde, and my decision was made. I ended up making a list of the family’s orders on an envelope Grandma had sent me, and just handed it to the bartender. I can’t imagine attempting to order in any other way! Heartbreakingly, they were out of stock of one of my favorite Canadian beers, and the runnerup, Maudite, from the same brewery wasn’t around either.

It wasn’t that heartbreaking though, because there were thousands of other beers to choose from. Dad had already bought a menu, more of a book of beers really. And the first round was all pretty good. It was a bit difficult to choose Belgian beers we’d never heard of out of a list of 2,000 and go 5 for 5. Mom got a peach beer, and Diane whatever was lightest.  After drinking this round, we discovered that their upstairs bar was the hoppy beer bar. Of course we headed there next. We were the only ones there, which was actually kind of nice because it wasn’t jam packed with tourists. For some reason Flying Dog is a the U.S. craft beer that is fairly available in Belgium, and there too, so it was nice to have something like the west coast IPAs I’m used to.

After our round there, we all were going to leave, but then some of the ladies needed to get shirts. This was a bit of a difficulty because of course everyone had to see the different shirts, find the guy who knew where the shirts were, pay for them, etc. And as we were walking away, Tina freaked out because apparently the dude had given her a women’s shirt, so she quickly raced back down stairs to swap it for a men’s. By now, people were starting to get hungry again. And, since pizza had never happened, it was time to find some pizza. So, we checked out the few pizza places a block from Delirium, and chose the one with the guy who told us they had a real pizza oven. Debatable. My mom went shopping in the meantime, and we ate pizza. Somebody may have spilled some beverage, which was likely sparkling water.

After pizza, we were on to another museum! This time it was a chocolate museum. On the way we saw what may have been a waffle museum, and tried to go, but we had to buy waffles and were pretty stuffed at this point. I am pretty sure this wasn’t the case . So, we just went to this chocolate museum which taught us about the different components of chocolate, the different places it’s grown, a bit of chocolate history, and of course several samples of both the chocolate beads and a truffle from a real life chocolatier who made them right in front of us.  After that we just went back to the hotel and played some pool. After all, it was going to be a big day tomorrow.

The next day we took the train to Bruges.  There was a bit of wandering before we found the town. I may have been the dawdler that day. First, I quizzed John about trees, because a bald cypress is pretty unusual to see, and then Priscilla and I went into the church and I finally learned about the stations of the cross. We had all come to the conclusion that Bruges seemed a bit like a ghost town, or the setting of a zombie movie or something. We hit the bell tower first, but ended up deciding the line was too long. After considering a fry truck, we saw a crazily masked street performer, and then went to a chocolate shop while helping Priscilla try to find an ornament. Based on my notes… this happened in a different order, but you get the picture. Then we went to lunch, where we sampled some beer from the brewery we were planning on visiting. We sat on the street, where there were plenty of people to watch (our I-spy game was for an Asian taking a picture). I am pretty sure I saw the beginning of a porno being filmed. (Europe, geez… jokes!) And then we headed to an art museum.

The art museum was the Groeningemuseum, which was a bunch of Flemish and Belgian art dating from the 1400’s all the way through modern art. So, it had a lot of stuff from Flemish primitives to impression,classical, realist, and post-modern art. The weirdest exhibit was of this lady who basically painted calligraphy and claimed it was based on the art we saw around us. I did not understand it, or really appreciate that exhibit a whole lot. Black brush strokes,wow!

Anyway, after the art museum we threw a Frisbee in the garden near it, and I threw the Frsibee through a tree. Well, the tree’s branches anyway. Then, it was time for the brewery tour. And, this was a solid tour, with a pretty funny tour guide. Pre-tour we had obviously gotten ourselves a beer… the last of which Joe brought on the tour, the glass ending up in John’s backpack. We got to see some of the old brewing equipment from centuries ago, got to climb up to the roof to see the place where the grain was malted and had an incredible view over town, and then of course we got some beer samples. Afterwards, with no real plans, we hung out at the brewery and tried the other kinds of beer that weren’t available for sampling on the tour. At one point well all took pictures trying to make the “I’m totally indifferent to everything going on around me” Tina face. We hung out for a while longer, and in the meantime I think my mom went shopping for Christmas ornaments again (but came back with ice cream, the Vivio way). We held down the fort drinking beer though.

After, we strolled toward the train station and found a nice grassy spot by a canal to play some Frisbee, accident waiting to happen, right? It didn’t take long before Frisbee number one was mid canal. We got sticks and rocks, but weren’t having much luck retrieving. Frisbee two (because who doesn’t travel with a backup Frisbee?!) met the same fate too quickly. It was all quite sad. Somewhere in there Tina got some stinging nettle. Lucky for Priscilla, I am too familiar with it, so was able to diagnose and even expose myself to a bit, to put her mind at ease. Tina wasn’t going to die. Reminiscent of a tick encounter, I’d say.

We all headed to the train station, a bit bummed about the Frisbees, one of which had been our only toy and cutting board the entire South America trip. John showed up a bit later, completely soaked, and STINKING with the Frisbee labeled ‘Tina’. Apparently he had gone for a swim. Unfortunately during all of this the glass in Johns bag from the brewery (oh, did we take that?) was broken, making a mess of broken glass.

I could not wait to shower. Being pretty sure I had probably got some kind of a disease from swimming in that canal, and smelling terrible, it was the first thing I did when we got back to Brussels. We probably had dinner which included more beer, and then went back to the hotel to go to bed somewhat early since we had to catch a train to Amsterdam the next day.

Giant breakfast again, and then we lugged all of our stuff to the train station to catch a train to Amsterdam. Or should I say several trains. Apparently there was construction going on the railways through Holland, so a lot of trains were either not running, or delayed, so the quickest way to get there involved changing trains like 3 times. While my dad was trying to figure out which tickets to get, we all were playing some ninja. I was particularly nervous because I’ve had a bad track record of injuries form this game including a dislocated shoulder and a split lip (Tina with the backhand!). Also, I went and got everyone cans of beer for shotgunning at the station before we left Brussels. This was a lot more difficult than I had expected. Of course Diane couldn’t figure out how to drink a beer fast enough to shotgun(which was John’s loss… we had been anticipating this event for at least a month and had bet on John’s sisters. I was pretty sure Tina had it, but John who seems to be incredibly bad at betting if it isn’t Vegas or sports, chose Diane). Nobody could figure out how to open the beers correctly. The camera for recording the even died half way through, and my mom just never even tried. Plus beer got on everyone. It was fun though. And not to be forgotten, Joe was the champion. Not that any of us thought we had a chance. Have you seen that guy drink a beer?!?!