Brussels

The last few days in Belgium have been great.  We started with Grand Place, and the Galleries St Hubert, which had many many chocolate shops.  We managed to sample almost all of them.  Dre was able to drink 13 different kinds of Belgian beer, he had no hope of trying them all in only 4 days!  We stayed right in the centre of the city, and were lucky enough to stay in 3 different rooms in the one hotel; we asked to move after the first night as they were painting and laying new carpet, then we asked to move after the second night as well, because the second room was a roadside room.  The 3rd one was good.  (Apart from the shower being a more like a water fountain and spraying water in all directions.)  Despite that it was still good, and they gave us a discount when we checked out so we did well.  Beside our hotel we were very lucky, as there were not only about 20 different restaurants (around 100 within 2 minutes walk), and beer places and chocolate shops, we also found 2 fresh food bars, which is more exciting than it sounds.  The one thing that is bad about travelling is the lack of anything that resembles healthy food.  Both of these places had around 30 different kinds of salads, fresh fruit, gluten free, dairy free, vegetarian goodness.  YUM.  On the following days we went exploring and saw all the main sights, as well as stumbling across a few other interesting things.  The cathedrals are really cool as they all have bells that you can hear when walking around.  We saw an impromptu puppet show (in French) and a live band also.  We found a massive park that doesn’t seem to be in any tourist books, which was nice and green.  We had read lots of stories about Brussels, saying that there is no green there, but we found lots of gardens and parks so didn’t really understand what they were on about.  We loved Ghent, where we went on a day trip yesterday.  Many Cathedrals, and the famous 13th Century painting ‘Adoration of the Mystic Lamb’ which was really interesting. Right now we’re on the train to Amsterdam so a new adventure is about to begin.