Our hotel offered us a coupon to the breakfast place down the street if we opted out of housekeeping. We're only staying two nights so we took them up on their offer. The restaurant specializes in Belgian waffles which I'm learning there are two main types. There is a desert version that has a high sugar content and a breakfast one that still has lots of sugar but is big and fluffy like what you would expect from a Belgian waffle. The family had various versions of Nutella, strawberries and bananas. Freshly made and very tasty.
Brussels has a very different approach to trash compared to London. In London there are very few garbage cans and no garbage to be seen. I think you're expected to swallow it. In Brussels, there are still very few garbage cans but over the course of the day trash ends up everywhere. Early in the morning a cleaning crew comes by with one guy sweeping out the corners into the street and another in a machine vacuuming everything up. There doesn't appear to be much of a recycling program because he was even sweeping glass bottles into the street to be cleaned up.
Another unique item we found was the one way street protectors. The column in the middle of the street stays up until you drive up to it from the proper direction, at which point it disappears into the street and you can drive through. This way people can't go down the street the wrong way. It's not easy to see the thing when you do drive up to it though, so you either have to stay back or be very confident in the lights that indicate it's moved down. I'm pretty sure at some point I would drive right into one.
We had already explored the area around our hotel so we headed up town into an area that included some office space and some more churches. We found what turns out to be the head quarters of the European Union. The architecture changes very quickly from old world buildings to modern office buildings. Nothing too special about the building itself however we did notice quite a bit of security in the area. I don't think anything big was happening but we have noticed a lot of support at construction sites for Ukraine. Blue and yellow is the theme for all construction fences.
We found another old church. I wonder if any of the religions build like this anymore. This one was flying a German flag and unlike some of the others we've seen appeared to be more active. Some of the churches looked like they were mainly tourist sites where this one clearly had everything it needed to have regular services. There were numerous rooms off the main hall for prayers and confessions and they had several paintings on display. Unlike in London, entry to these churches is free to enter.
We eventually made our way to the National Art History Museum which had a small charge of $10 Euros for adults and free for kids. The museum itself was just as well done as the British Museum with the major difference being that there was almost no one there. It was a bit of a hike to get there and it wasn't free but if you want to see well presented artifacts throughout history it has plenty to look at. The spookiest item was the graves containing skeletons as they were found. Six feet under and visible through glass.
Carter knocked off the second McDonalds on his list. He's trying to go to one in every country we visit. McDonald's are pretty standard everywhere you go. Ordering was the same and they didn't get mad at you if you said you wanted take out and ate in instead. I had the McChicken which was essentially the same except they shaped the patty as if it was a real piece of chicken and it had a Miracle Whip like mayonnaise that I did not like. The fries tasted the same.
We had noticed the number of waffle houses when we came in but with our latest wandering we discovered just how many chocolate shops there were. I think there were at least 50 that were either full on chocolate or had a substantial chocolate offering. The chocolate is also much better that what we end up having at places like Purdy's in Canada. It's smoother and they have a lot of options with a smooth truffle like interior which is my favorite. Our only problem was that it was too warm in our hotel room to store it. Hopefully what we bought makes it.
Carter had an interesting experience on our way back to our hotel room. Just as he and I were walking away to get him some food, a rather loud possibly homeless French speaking woman was having an argument with her companion. We're not sure if she physically spit or was just saying French words in a spitting fashion since as Carter states, "French is a very spitty language." We cleaned him up as best we could and then went back to the hotel to shower. He may have then been peed on by a pigeon. Either way he showered immediately and texted his friends about his Europe experience.
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