Brussels Highlights:
The Grand Place. This is the main square of Brussels with the town hall and some other really cool buildings. In nice weather, the entire center is an intricate carpet of flowers, but it's winter so I missed that. You should really Google it though. Incredible.
The Waffles. Holy cow, the waffles. I didn't realize that Belgian waffles were actually Belgian. I equated them with French fries and things like that. I'm pleased to report that I was wrong. They are real, and they are delicious. I opted for a chocolate banana waffle on day one and a banana Nutella waffle on day two. Yummm.
I'd assume that the bottom picture is getting a fair number of "what the heck is that"s, so I'll explain. It's Manneken Pis ("Little Man Pee"), a tiny copper statue of a peeing baby around which Brussels seems to center it's tourism industry. It's apparently been stolen repeatedly throughout the years, and there's a foundation devoted to regularly dressing him in tiny outfits. Again, I can't make this stuff up.
That picture of me is horrendous (My iPhone likes to distort faces a bit as retribution for selfie-taking, as I've recently discovered.), but I had to include it thanks to the random tourist that made his way into my picture and pretended to pee back at the baby.
On a completely different note, Brussels is the de facto capital of the European Union, so we went to where they have the EU Parliament, Commission, etc. There is also a large, interactive museum about the European Union there, which was quite interesting.
That night, we went to a famous bar called Delirium. In 2004, they were awarded a Guinness World Record for carrying the most beers (over 2000). As someone who isn't a big fan of beer, I was thrilled to find a Belgian beer called Floris Krieg that was pretty much cherry juice with a hint of beer. Going there was a cool experience, but it was standing room only and everyone got claustrophobic pretty quickly.
Once leaving there, we passed a Thai karaoke bar and decided to check it out. It was the epitome of a hole-in-the-wall, but we had an absolute blast. The bar was tiny to begin with and pretty much empty when we arrived, so we immediately got to singing whatever English songs the DJ felt like playing for us, which ended up being mostly Destiny's Child, Celine Dion, Backstreet Boys, a smattering of other 90s songs, and some Rihanna. We repeatedly begged him to play some Journey, and after about the 3rd time, he looked it up online. At this point the bar had begun to fill up, and the other patrons seemed somewhat entertained and more than a little confused watching us drunkenly scream-sing "Don't Stop Believin'".
The next morning, we got up and traveled to Ghent (and switched over from French to Flemish). Ghent is a beautiful town with a lot of history. The highlight for me was without doubt the cathedrals (Here I go again...but I spared you from hearing all about the one in Brussels), the most impressive of which was St. Bavo's. I wish the pictures could do it justice, as with everything I try to share.
There was a guy playing harp in there at the time who actually composed all of his own music. He was fantastic and I wanted to buy his CD, but 20 Euros was pretty far outside the budget.
This was the view from my hostel bed while I was staying in Ghent.
From. My. Bed.:
It's times like these that I stop and realize just how blessed I am to be going on all these adventures. Speaking of the hostel, this was the outside of it:
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