brusselsprouts

Cool city!! We stayed with a wonderful Couchsurfing host, Did. He lives 20 minutes by metro from the center of Brussels, so it was super easy to get to and from downtown. He has a beagle named Luna and a cat who eats out of this funny toy she has to play with to get her food out of. Luna was so funny; she got ridiculously excited whenever we arrived back at the house and was particularly playful and food motivated. Did warned us not to leave our snacks on the floor so we put our snack bag up on a high table he thought was plenty high. Not high enough. Did showed us a picture of the remains he found after she had been alone in the house for the day. Oats strewn everywhere, every single Ziploc bag torn through, nothing left except for a few tea bags and a Milky Way.

Did invited us to join his for his birthday brunch with his friends the next day. We helped him prepare the night before. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening of baking carrots cakes and cooking late into the night, drinking wine, and eating dinner from all the tasty things we were making.

The brunch the next morning was also cool to get to be a part of. Did has a group of 15 or so good friends who know each other and have stayed close since college (15 years ago!). Several had kids and brought them along too, so it was a lively brunch indeed. With so many delicious foods, including a selection of eight cheeses ;)  We talked to a couple of guests who told us about this Belgian style event they were at the night before. A huge group (2,000-3,000 people) walked for a total of 10 km with checkpoints every 2 km. At each checkpoint was the next course of a dinner, including drinks. At the final checkpoint, dessert and a live band. They were out until 5:00am and said it was a blast. Apparently these things happen pretty frequently in Belgium. We think it’s time for the United States to start having them as well!

We also of course spent a lot of time walking around the city center. Major highlights include:

The “Brussels eat! Bordeaux drink!” Festival. We just happened to stumble across this tented food and wine festival in the Parc de Bruxelles, and it was a dream come true for Monisha. Probably 100 or so restaurants had stands in one of the four huge tents, and were serving one or two small, beautifully displayed and delicious looking plates. We asked one of the chefs what the event was and he turned out to be from Santa Rosa, California! He told us what it was and offered us a squid ink and tapioca chip (a garnish for their small plate). We walked around through a couple of the tents admiring all the foods, and many of the stands had little sample things they told us we could try. One of the less delicious but more interesting stands was an insect stand. They were selling dried crickets with various flavors as well as some baked goods made with cricket flour.

 

Magritte Museum. This was de la balle (VERY COOL). The set up led you through three levels to create a very intentional experience. As we strolled through the surrealist paintings, Monisha tried (sometimes successfully) to translate the Magritte quotes written on the walls in French.  As we read his words we decided more and more that we really liked this guy.  He had a sort of deep sense of humor, which paired well with the crazy surrealist art all around us.  One of our favorite quotes was (translated): “poetry is a pipe.”  He also really liked to emphasize how little symbolism was in his art.  Another quote read “people who look for symbolic meaning fail to grasp the inherent poetry and mystery of the images.”  We also particularly liked the following paintings:

  

Atomium.  After seeing Magritte’s art, we took a long metro ride to the other side of Brussels. We had seen signs and posters around the city that had pictures of a large metal statue that sort of resembles an atom.  On our way to the statue, we passed an amusement park called Little Europe.  Monisha had a funny thought: “most of the things people go to see in Europe are famous because of their massive size, and yet here people pay upwards of 30 euros to see them all small.”  Not that we believe they shouldn’t.  We peeked in and it is pretty cool to see Europe minified.  Upon arrival at the Atomium, we realized that it’s not really a statue as much as a GIANT BUILDING.  Seriously, this thing is enormous. As we walked towards it from the metro, we did not realize how far away it was.  Standing under it was quite impressive.

 

A walk in a lovely park near Atomium.  This walk was made better by the QUADRUPLE RAINBOW that we saw just as the days rain subsided.  Neither of us has ever seen a rainbow quite like this one.  Somehow, the bottom rainbow just didn’t end.  It just had more bands of color right below it, two entire other rainbows of color. We don’t know what caused this.

This beautiful view of the city:

SO many chocolate shops...like an unbelievable number of chocolate shops, everywhere. This was a beautiful gallery street, and about 1/3 of of the shops were chocolate shops.

 

And of course, Mannekin Pis. Okay, calling this a major highlight is definitely a stretch.  We actually knew this was going to be a disappointment going in, so on the walk over we got kind of excited to be let down.  This oh so famous statue is only like two feet tall, and there isn’t really any reason it should be as famous as it is.  However, when we turned a corner and saw close to four dozen umbrellas crowded around a little peeing metal boy, we were quite delighted.  We also ran into his counterpart: Jeanneke Pis, the peeing girl.

New favorite hot chocolate.  Belgium knows its chocolate, and Belgium hot chocolate is just as tasty as we imagined.

We also got some Belgian fries. During our brunch with Did’s friends, we mentioned that we had already tried the fries in Holland so we didn’t feel any need to get them in Belgium.  Everyone was quite taken aback and insisted that Belgian fries are something completely different and that we needed to experience them.  So, late that night we hopped on a bus and headed to Maison Antoine.  We got a cheap “Mega Burger” and a large fries with mayo and house tartar sauce. A classic fast food meal. These fries were very yummy, and were indeed better than the fries we got in Holland (sorry Dutch relatives!). However, fried potato pieces can only get so good; they were no sweet potato fries.

One night we considered going out for dinner but instead cut costs and bought frozen pizza and witloof with cheese and ham (that classic Belgian dish we tried to get before and made it a goal to try in Belgium). We had a really enjoyable night eating frozen food and drinking wine together in the apartment. The witloof was abysmal. I [M] don’t know why I set my expectations anywhere…I [N] expected no more. It was truly awful. But the pizza was delicious.

And one major lowlight: Monisha got really sick one night.  She’d had a pretty bad sore throat for a couple days, bad enough that she would wince every time she needed to swallow. Then, one night around 4:30am, she woke up with a serious headache.  I’m [N] always hesitant to call a headache a migraine, since people who get migraines say they are a completely different class of headache.  However, I’m pretty sure this one would qualify :(.  Fortunately, with a lot of massaging, a hot shower, four ibuprofen, and a hot bath, the pain subsided and she could go back to sleep. 

And that wraps it up for Brussels! We are now in Paris staying with Erica! Stay tuned for our Parisian adventures ;)