Brussels Day 1

Today was my first full day in Brussels. I woke up a little too early, about 7 and promptly ate breakfast at the hotel and left before 7:30. I decided to walk up to where all the sights that I wanted to see were, it was about 1 km. I used the Palais de Justice as my guide as it was on top of the hill in Brussels and had a distinctive gold roof. On my way I walked through the grand place on the way. One of the original squares in the town, it houses the town hall and other administrative buildings, many of which date back to the 1400’s. At this point the grand place was totally empty because it was only 8AM and nothing opens until 10 on the weekends. I then continued on my way to the Palais de Justice. I walked around it… But you couldn’t go in. After this I marched around the area for awhile until I found the Parc du Bruxelles where I walked around for a little, not as pretty as it would be in the sun but still quite nice. Surrounding the park were several old buildings (note: all buildings in Brussels are old as most date before 1700). The coolest looking of the bunch was the Royal Palace, unfortunately the current king and queen do not reside there but it is quite the place, again it isn’t open to the public until later in the year . After this I walked around the marketplace area where I found a neat little waffle shop and got my first real Belgian waffle!! It was delicious. As it was still raining I went and found the Musee des Beaux Arts (Directly translated: Pretty Art Museum… sounds better in French). It had an interesting mix of paintings. As I know very little about art my description probably does not do it justice. The paintings were very interesting. I have seen dutch paintings and many of the paintings were similar to the dutch masters paintings which are dark and creepy looking but many of the paintings were a mix of dark and light styles. As I said my descriptions do not do the paintings justice but I really enjoyed them. After discovering the Museum I went and grabbed some lunch at a traditional Belgian restaurant. I had some good sausages with “stoemp” which is some sort of mashed potatoes with some sort of squash or sweet potatoes mixed in, very good, especially when mixed with a nice Belgian beer. After lunch it was off on another adventure. I walked and found the city cathedral and the Parliament building of the European Union. Both were very impressive!! After this I wandered around by the Grand Place for awhile and stumbled upon the Belgian GLBT festival and walked around that until I felt too uncomfortable to enjoy the music anymore. On the way back I found the Manneken Pis which is kind of what it sounds like. It is a fountain with a statue of a boy peeing (yes the water comes from his wee-wee/dong/whatever you want to call it). There are many legends of why this fountain is what it is but nobody knows for sure. The cool part is on many days of the year, he gets dressed up in an outfits to take on the day. Today he was in a bright orange rain suit. After seeing the manneken I headed back for a good night’s rest. But before I got to sleep I got trapped into the Eurovision song contest on TV. For those who have never heard of it, you are lucky! It is basically a battle of the pop-stars between all the European countries. It was on every channel in every language on the hotel tv. After each country performs there is a ½ hour to vote for the “best” group. The trick is you can’t vote for your own country. At the end of voting they go through each country and announce how the votes in that country came out, the top 6 or 8 score points (12 for 1st, 10 for 2nd and so on) after this happens for nearly an hour, the group with the highest score wins. The best part is how the countries vote. The voting ends up being in blocks. The top votes in the eastern block countries go to their fellow nations, ie Serbia gives its top points to Russia, Bosnia, etc. This was particulary amusing because there were only a handful of western European countries in the final and they all finished in the bottom ½ because nobody voted for them. This was unfortunate because some of the better groups like Finland and England scored almost no points.