Stop Two on the European Express; Brussels

As part of their visit, Meera and her husband Gautam thought it would be fun to go somewhere else in Europe while they were in London, so we decided to do an an overnight trip to Brussels. It's such a quick trip by train, 2 hours, and the city was small enough we felt 24 hours would be plenty. We were spot on (aka right)!

Overall, I wasn't that impressed with the city, the food on the other hand was incredible. Brussels had some stunning architecture but I didn't feel that magic or awe that I did when I was in Paris. The city was also extremely hard to navigate. The public transportation system was a mess and when walking around the city by foot I can't tell you how many times we got lost! Street names kept changing on us every block so we couldn't follow a map to save our lives. But we made the best of the trip in the short time we were their

On Day One, we decided to just aimlessly wander around the city and see what treasures we might stumble on. We saw the famous Grand Palace which is the commercial heart of the city. It's basically a square and in the summer time they hold a giant market their on the weekends. The square was outlined with some of the most beautiful building I've ever seen. They were very

Renaissance like, ornate, and just bigger than life.

We then found ourselves on the Rue des Bouchers. It's a cobblestone street, home to tons of restaurants and cafes and can only be accessed by foot. You could get any kind of food here you wanted. Indian, Greek, Italian, but the what's it most famous for is seafood. Any seafood restaurant would have these lavish displays of mussels, oysters, lobsters, crabs piled on mounds of ice. The owners of the restaurant would literally shout at you from the streets to come into their restaurant because they had the best this or the best that. They were quite aggressive.

At that point in the day we weren't feeling seafood, we were looking for one thing and one thing only, WAFFLES! It's Belgium so we knew the waffles had to be good. Good is an understatement, these waffles were frickin unbelievable. Waffles were being sold on every street corner from shops to street stalls, l so you could smell them everywhere you went. I thought I had died and gone to heaven when I had my first waffle. It was covered in chocolate and was so buttery... After that first hit, I seriously was craving one every hour. It was like crack.

Another thing Brussels is know for is mussels. The famous dish is moules and frites (mussels and fries). So, after wandering around all day we were ready to try for dinner and went searching for mussels and frites. Come to find out , mussels are not in season during this time so we opted for a lobster dinner instead. No complaints here, the lobster was delicious!

Day 2 we decided we should be a bit more self disciplined so we opted for a 90 minute self guided walking tour of the city. This ended up being a great way to the city and its sites. But because we got lost so many times 90 minutes turned into 3 hours. Before we began our tour we had stop and get waffles. This time we had strawberries and chocolate. Again, frickin delicious!!!

Day 2 also included a couple visits to a few chocolate shops or what the Belgian calls chocolatiers. These places were for like museums than chocolate shops, we're not talking your average Godiva shop. Belgian chocolate is supposed to be in the best world and I can now say that is absolutely true. Hershey's ain't got nothin' on them.

So, all in all we had a great trip and I can now mark Belgium off my list places to visit in Europe. Would I go there again? Probably not, but if someone promised me all I could eat waffles I might have to re consider. I have a ton more photos that I took of the city, I've posted a few of my favorites below but as always I will send out my online album separately.