Brussels (don't know what day it is, ha)

When I was studying what places we wanted to visit on our trip, our girls told us that we needed to visit Amsterdam to see all the bicycles, and Brussels for the chocolate and Fries. Well, when I was studying what to see in Brussels, it seemed that every travel site I looked at would mention a fountain called Manneken Pis, which is a small bronze statue of a little boy peeing in a fountain. I thought, I don't care about seeing a fountain like that. Why am I wasting part of my vacation on a stop in Brussels?? But besides the silly little fountain, I truly enjoyed this stop.

Here is the fountain. It is a very small fountain, and I just don't get it. Who knows?

For some reason, there were clothes on the little boy. For that I am thankful:)

We started our day pretty early in the morning because we knew we were going to have just one day and today is also laundry day. So the first thing we did was visit the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula. From what I can tell, the building was started in 1047, and then evolved into what it is today. We were going to tour the whole building that was offered to the public, but it looked as if they were holding an early morning service and there was no one to give our money to and to get information, but we did walk around the main area. I enjoyed the architecture and we got to hear the bells.

We strolled around and got to see everything on my list, plus more. I loved the statue on the top left. The words say, "Birth of a Nation."

We experienced the Grand Place in the morning and at night, which had an outstanding Christmas light show. 

The Grand Place is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was a site to behold for sure.

Here is a bit of Brussels at night:

It's funny what you can learn on the internet these days. We even googled how to wash clothes in Brussels. But like anywhere else, it seems that no matter how much you read, we still didn't know what to do when we got there. We had to rely on the kindness of a stranger, who I think was an angel, to show us what to do. Come to find out, he is from Barcelona and switches homes from there for two weeks, to Brussels for two weeks. He spoke English well (thankfully), and I asked him how many languages he spoke. He said SEVEN!! But also said that he is an interpreter. Which in Brussels, where the European Union is, I believe that skill would come in handy. But all I know is that he was able to show us how to wash our clothes and we were very thankful.

We asked for a recommendation for a restaurant, and he recommended:

I ate a dish called Carbonnades, and you will never guess what Anthony had. . . A hamburger, ha!! That's his go to meal anywhere. And of course we had fries:)

Anthony also had a waffle, which was very good (of course. It's Belgium after all)

Our friend Jim had texted us the night we got to Brussels and said that we needed to be especially careful since Trump had made the Jerusalem announcement. There was a high police presence, but don't know if that was because England's PM Theresa May was there or Trump's announcement. But we did see a group of people with Palestinian flags making an announcement to reporters on the side of the road from where we were walking.

Thankfully, everyone was peaceful and we felt extremely safe everywhere we went.

Before we went back to our room for the night, we made sure we stopped by Mary Chocolatier to purchase some chocolates for Alyssa by special request. Alyssa, if they don't make it home, at least you might end up with this cute little bag.

I also wanted to share how we are making our breakfast in the mornings. We had the fastest electric tea kettle in our room the last two nights. And we knew we could make instant oatmeal, but we decided to try boiling eggs also. So we did an experiment and it worked perfectly.

This is a traveling day for us today and we got up and walked our 30 minute walk to the area where we were dropped off by the Ouibus two days ago. But today we are riding the Flixbus to Paris. It will be about a 4 hour ride, so not bad at all. Our bus is being driven by a husband/wife team, and when we were about halfway through our trip, they switched, so now the wife is driving. We are getting to enjoy some of the French countryside going about 100 km per hour.