Into a carbohydrate dream…

I’m coming to you from Brussels where we have spent out last 48 hours roaming around and trying to figure out this strange city. One thing I can say with all certainty: Healthy eating has completely gone out the window. Our bellies have consumed such items as brewskies, waffles, frites (fries), pasta and some more frites. In other words, as the title would suggest, a carbohydrate dream. Or nightmare. But we prefer dream.
Feeling the end of the trip and the amount of blogging this trip has taken I will sum up our time here all in this blog. We arrived in Sunday afternoon to the south train station and begin a long trek up to our hostel. We figured we could make a couple stops along the way and take in this new city. Well what we came across was not at all what either of us had expected from Brussels. Not really sure what to expect but what we found was, for a lack of a better word, kind of dirty. It took us about 45-50 minutes to get to our place and we just felt like we had stumbled across an abandoned area, devoid of much street/foot traffic in lots of places, trash in the streets and a general lack of upkeep. We arrived at our place a little out of sorts and desperately in need of bathrooms. Well the hostel was the start of the upswing. We got into our place completely furnished with the IKEA catalog. We quickly learned it was a common theme across the whole establishment. The room was big, the bunk beds decent and the internet nice and fast, and more importantly free!
We spent the next couple hours settling ourselves in, getting caught up on blogs, uploads and emails. Feeling in much better spirits we headed around the block, enjoyed some really good Italian food and I started my odyssey to try the best this city had to offer in beers. After eating a lion’s share of food we got back to our place and slept long and decent, to prep for another day of city exploring.
Monday was about the Belgian beers and we set out a map and plan to try places that I had researched and knew about and decided the rest of the day would fill in as it needed to. We took the train to the only brewery still open in Brussels, Cantillon, where they specialize in Lambic beers, a kind of beer that lacks more of the usual CO2 common in most beers and even presents something of a sour taste. It’s really quite good and one of the only places around that offers this type of beer. We got to take the tour on our own accord, wandering through informative rooms full of old wooden casket barrels and cobwebs. The place seemed very old, very natural and very much staying true to the traditions of what they wanted to achieve. We tried a few samples after the tour that even Kris enjoyed and purchased a set of coasters to commemorate the visit. We made our way to the city center which offered much of the feel of the city we were probably expecting and we began to realize the Brussels is much like most big cities, a city with its pretty parts, its ugly parts, its surprising parts and its very straight forward parts. The center gave me a chance to sample three more beers in three different bars, including the famous Delirium Café, advertising its 2,004 different kinds of beers on site. I had one.  And it was awesome!!
The rest of our afternoon also included super yummy waffle and fries stands, a visit to the touristy famous peeing boy statue (how tragically perfect that this statue is the national icon), a super cool old movie theater that we wandered around its lobby and the Grand Plaza. The beer was central to the day but we did quite enjoy the center of this strange city.
After getting back to the hostel that evening to heat up our Italian leftovers we made nice with our second set of folks sharing our room and hit the hay realizing just how close we were to making this trip a “was”. Now THAT’S strange!
Tuesday was more care free then the last. Sleeping in would have been great, save for the second set of roommates that needed to be up early for whatever. Sooo, waking up earlier than expected we took our time getting ready, doing internet type of things and headed out. We made it back downtown and did what any good world traveler might do: saw movies. No judging! After weeks of cramming ourselves with sights, cities, friends, shows and all the rest, vegging out in the movie theatre was a welcome change. Her and I split off for our first film and snuck our way into a second. This is affectionately known in younger (or poorer, however you look at it) circles as “movie buffet.” 4 hours later we re-hit the streets of Brussels with little else on the agenda. We needed to make sure we knew where to go to get to Amsterdam so we figured that out before eating our last Belgium meal. Plus sides: Great food, reasonable prices and fast service. Down side: A severely irritating case of fruit flies, which I have come to learn are all over this city. Seriously. It seems to be an issue that the locals have just learned to live with. Kind of gross, but not enough to not enjoy our fine omelets. I was able to sample a couple more beers for the night and we headed back to “home”.
Brussels is wacky, Brussels is fun. Brussels is smelly, Brussels is tasty. Not having a ton of expectations for this city, it charmed us in its own strange way. But the time has come for our last stop. Amsterdam is calling us for tomorrow and then sending us on our way. Back to America and whatever comes next.