The Wanderings of Mountain Mice: Try, try again

So let's try this again. I wrote a beautiful post (I swear!) about our first day in Brussels, but lost it due to some technical difficulties having to do with the fingers and the brain. Miss M says I'm not a real blogger until that happens. So here we go...

Post for Tuesday, June 17.

After 18 hours of travel, we arrived in Brussels to reunite with the girls! I'm a little fuzzy on the details since we didn't get a lot of sleep on the plane. Basically, we came back to the flat, cleaned up a bit, then went out to old Brussels.

We first went to the Grand Place, or central square surrounded by the City's old Town Hall (Hotel de Ville) and various guild houses (bread, cloth, meat, and beer?). They were all built around the 1600s in the gothic style, but each had their own character.

I didn't take a ton of pictures, but I hope Chummy can fill in the pictorial gaps.

This is the Bread House, or Maison Du Roi or the King's House.

Cookie peaking through the door of the Town Hall.

Grammy and Grampa taking their first selfie.

From there we wandered over to the Manneken Pis, or Piss Boy. I honestly don't know why he is there, or why he is famous, but he is. I know Chummy has a picture somewhere, so maybe he can share it later.

This being Belgium, there are dozens of chocolate shops in every direction, and just as many shops selling Gaufres - the real deal Belgian waffles with lots of toppings. Of course Grammy and Grampa wanted us to have an authentic Belgian experience, so they treated us to lots of samplings.

Curiously, there are also lots of comic stores around the city. We never went in any, but there was at least one on every block we walked on. There were also several building-sized murals of Tin Tin and some gift shops selling Strumpfs, the original Smurfs.

For dinner we headed over to the Petite Rue de Bruchers. I remember this as enticing alleyways crammed with vendors selling fresh seafood - a mix between fisherman's wharf and a flea market. There weren't as many stalls of seafood, but there were plenty of barkers prostituting their restaurants. To be honest, we skipped Grammy and Grampas favorite place in order to get a better view of the TV showing the World Cup game of Belgium vs. Algeria. The service was not unexpectedly slow, but the waiters were definitely entertaining. After each goal and the 2-1 Belgian win, the waiters would run up and down the street, bellowing, blowing whistles, and belly-bumping each other. The sounds of celebration were repeated in every direction and continued for the next few hours.