Day 3

After a good nights rest, we were off again this morning. The first stop was the famous Manniken Pis statue. I didn't realize how small it was! Then we walked over to the Grand Place, which is the main square in Brussels. And at 8 am, it was completely empty! And very cold. All the building were so big and I could barely fit them in pictures. The next stop was the Notre Dame du Sablon, which we didn't quite make it to, because the Justice Palace distracted us. Even though the entire front of the building was covered in scaffolding, the inside and side views were pretty nice. I guess it was modeled after the Romans, which was pretty interesting to see. After that we started walking over to the Porte de Hal, Brussels only remaining city gate. I learned today why the parks are so nice in Brussels. Apparently, you are not allowed to walk in the grass. Some one let me know loudly in French. After some more walking and sightseeing, the Musical Instrument Museum was the next stop. There are over 1500 different musical instruments inside, and they gave you headphones so you could listen to them. Pretty nifty, if I so say so. We stopped in a nice cafe for some soup and sandwiches. We stopped by the EU headquarters before making the long journey to the Cantillion Brewery. And it was at this time that I thought my feet were going to fail me while I was walking. The tour was pretty interesting, and I'm still unsure about the beer that they gave us at the end. But, when in Belgium... After a nice 4 hour nap at the hostel and a recovery session for my feet, it was dinner time. We found a really good Chinese restaurant and I had a huge place of chicken fried rice. And apparently asking for water will cost you almost 2 euros. I won't make that mistake again. Now I'm just sitting in a very loud bar with very slow wifi and getting ready to end the night. Hopefully I can upload some pictures when we get into Bruges on Sunday. Until then, you'll just have to imagine everything (or look up a picture online). Hopefully my legs will get used to all of this walking. And hopefully I wake up on time tomorrow. Apparently without phone service, our phones can't display the time, which means no alarm. I looked all day, but Brussels doesn't have a Target. Maybe in Bruges...