Brussels, Belgium

For our second weekend trip, we decided to go to a different country and check out Brussels, Belgium. It is only a two-hour drive from where we live, and it was a city we both had never been to before, so we packed up our bags and went. Because it was so near by, we left Saturday morning and only stayed one night there before heading back home.

Brussels is a crazy international city. Not only do they have two official languages for the entire country (Dutch and French), but Brussels is also home to many European Union offices as well NATO offices. Every sign is posted in at the minimum two languages, but often times more. It was pretty easy to get around in the city and most everyone we spoke to spoke English. Well, I should say that it is easy to understand the signs in the city. Actually getting around we found a little difficult since the streets twist and turn and it is hard to see where they post the road names most of the time. When we were driving in to the city and trying to get to our hotel the GPS kept telling us to turn on certain streets, but it was almost impossible to tell what streets we were on. We made it to our hotel after a few wrong turns and circling around.

Our hotel. They built the new hotel around the old city gate tower. Our room looked out over the tower

Mikayla trying on my sunglasses around her neck

Mikayla saw this empty cupboard and spent about a half an hour getting in and out of it

Peeking over the door of the cupboard

After we checked in to our hotel, we went out walking. Neither of us knew very much about the city, but we looked at the map our hotel concierge had given us and thought it would be interesting to head towards the cathedral. The bells in the bell tower went off about every 15 minutes and would play some pretty music in addition to counting out the time.

St. Michel's Cathedral in the center of town

A window in the cathedral

Darren relaxing on one of the lounging chairs available in the park in front of the cathedral. We stopped here to have a picnic lunch in the shade of the trees before heading on.

The Grand-Place, a fun square that is surrounded on all sides by gilded houses and museums.

A crossbow competition in La Grand-Place that was taking place while we were there... not sure who won, but it was fun to watch for a little bit.

Darren and Mikayla in La Grand-Place

Downtown Brussels

Mmmmm.... Belgian chocolate

Museum of Chocolate

The sign for the Museum of Chocolate

The "Chocolate Master" at work, showing us how he makes his wonderful creations

The Musical Instruments Museum

A close up of one of facade of the Musical Instruments Museum building

L'Arc de Triomphe du Cinquantenaire - built to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Belgium's independence.

The Royal Palace

Gardens of the "Mont des Arts" and a view over Brussels

A Shopping Gallery

The Atomium. It was built for the 1958 Worlds Fair and represents an elementary iron crystal enlarged 160 billion times.

Darren at the Atomium

Taking the subway. Mikayla loved riding on the trains. She now points out trains wherever we go, and knows that they go "fast."

They love their comics in Brussels. We saw stuff like this everywhere. They even have a whole museum dedicated to comic strips.

A fabulous little store that I went into and found some delicious biscuits, chocolate-covered almonds, and many other wonderful things.

Yummy biscuits. You can buy them in bulk and try out the many different flavors

A display of candies

The little cafe that we ate at on Sunday before we headed home. We had to walk a little ways to get here, but thought that we couldn't leave Belgium without having some authentic Belgium waffles

And it sure was worth it! It was delicious.

On Sunday morning, we looked out of the hotel window and saw that it was raining. We thought about waiting for it to let up, but we only had one day to see all the rest of the sights of Brussels and didn't feel like we had time. The one thing that Darren had been talking about that he really wanted to do while in Belgium was go on an "Art Neveaux" walk. He had read about it in a book and saw the suggested walk on our map. We hadn't gotten to it on Saturday because Mikayla was starting to melt down and my feet were hurting (I had definitely worn the wrong shoes for the amount of walking we did), so Sunday was our only chance. So, we set out in the rain to see what we could see.Mikayla and I ready for our walk. We were sure glad that the hotel had a big umbrella we could use!

Darren all geared up for the rain. The stroller was along for the ride in case it ever stopped raining and if Mikayla got tired of being in the backpack carrier. She did get tired of being on my back, but it never stopped raining. So he had to carry it the entire time.

A street in Brussels that we saw during our rainy walk

A heron that we saw during our rainy walk

We really enjoyed the time that we spent in Brussels. It was beautiful and a fun place to go.