We kicked off our March Break a few days early, leaving on Wednesday the 11th. First stop, the Maple Leaf Lounge at Pearson :)
We had an overnight flight to Frankfurt with a couple of hours' layover and then onto Brussels. Before we took off I randomly checked the news in Brussels and found out the airport was planning a strike for the next day with all departing flights to be cancelled. Some arriving flights could still land but we wondered if our plane would even be able to leave to get to Frankfurt to get us.
When we landed it seemed like our flight to Brussels was still on time as scheduled and we were able to land. The airport was pretty much empty with only a handful of flights landing and none taking off. We were very lucky it turned out!
In the Brussels airport.
We got a cab to our hotel, and were again lucky to avoid the protests that had been happening all morning in the city centre. This was related to the airport strike, basically a protest against the austerity measures being introduced by the government.
We checked into our hotel Cardo Brussels. Our room was ready when we arrived so we got to go right up.
The lobby.
We had booked a family room so we had two adjoining rooms with a king bed in one room and two twin beds in the other, two bathrooms, and a small sitting area. It was ideal for us. They had nice little extras like coffee and tea, robes and slippers, and blackout blinds.
And this somewhat creepy artwork.
After spending a few minutes getting settled in, we set off for a walk and to find something to eat and drink.
I love a European city.
Our first stop was the Delirium Village which has several different bars down one alley.
We chose The Delirium Cafe Brussels, that serves over 2000 kinds of beer. We chose one and a few Sprites for the kids.
Since Delirium doesn't really serve food we needed to find somewhere else to go. We stopped in at the Wolf Food Market - a food hall. We were there mid-afternoon and most places weren't open yet, but the pizza place was, and the bar, so we got what we needed.
We walked around a little bit more and got a real Belgian waffle.
We then gladly went back to the hotel and got to bed. We got to sleep in the next day and we weren't in a huge hurry to get going because it was quite rainy.
By 10:30 we were out the door to find breakfast. Dave had found My Kofee a couple of blocks away and it was excellent.
Delicious breakfast for good prices.
Then we hopped on the bus to get further into the city centre.
Place de la Bourse.
We were looking for some rainy day activities and found The Museum of Infinite Realities. We didn't really know what this was supposed to be, but thought it would be like optical illusions. It was not like that, and even after we did the whole thing we still aren't sure what it was supposed to be. But what does happen is that you are assigned a "spirit animal" (I guess the Belgians don't know about indigenous culture misappropriation). All of got Wolf, except for Q who got Bear. We had the option of buying these photos of us with our animal, but Dave just took photos of the photos. Again, we were confused by the whole thing.
After that we needed to find some frites.
And we did and found a spot inside to eat them.
It was springtime in Brussels, the trees were in bloom.
We found Manneken Pis, the little peeing boy statue. Every day he gets a new outfit.
This was a neat building across the street with bicycles on the sides.
Outfits for Manneken Pis.
Since it was still rainy and cold we got back to our hotel and went for a swim.
That night we had lobby drinks and played cards.
Because we had bought the day pass for the metro, we took the subway to dinner. We went to Le Clan des Belges.
We had a delicious meal, including moules and frites for me, and E ordered a flambéed dessert. Unfortunately my photos turned out blurry, but it was cool!
I'll continue my recap tomorrow.
