A Year Abroad: Bruxelle Sprouts.

This morning was an early 5am start. The bus left London at 8am and joined the line of traffic through the centre of the city. It was cool driving through the posher streets of London and then heading into the country. So much greenery! We arrived at Dover at around midday and jumped on a massive ferry type thing to head to Callais. The weather went from sunny and warm in London to typical cloudy Northern France weather. Two Cosmos tours had come over from London and when we arrived in Callais only one of the buses was waiting, the other was being cleared by spot customs checks. About half an hour later it showed up and we packed in and left only to be pulled up for a random spot check on our way out! The wait gave me time to observe the other tourers. About half of the tour look older than 60, and the other half are either 50ish or 20-25ish. A wide mix, but everyone seems nice.

English countryside

Dover

Crossing the channel

Calais

Once the spot check was done, we passed through the French countryside which was lovely on our way to Belgium. As we were nearing the border, we passed through some small French villages. I wondered how they survived without being very near to a large town centre. Imagine their Sunday agriculture markets. Self sufficient villages are my fav!

The architecture also changed as we crossed and got further to Brussels. The houses became more an English/Dutch style. We circled Brussels and went to our hotel, which was a bit out of town. So to explore, mum and I opted for the optional tour. We hopped a bus into the city centre with our new Belgian tour guide. He had one of the funniest voices I've ever heard, like a happy Italian speaking English with a Dutch accent who was excitedly telling fairy tales. The bus tour took us past the Congress Column, tomb of the unknown soldier, Parliament, Royal Park, Arch of Cinquaninaire, EU buildings, Academy Place, Royal Palace and Royal Square, St. Michele's Cathedral and the Palace of Justice. The history of the country was also really interesting to listen to. They're reasonably only a new country, having been released from Dutch rule only about 150 years ago (give or take a lot, I'm not actually sure...). As the country is so small (land wise and with a population of 11 million), no one wanted to take rule of the country once it was a free state, so the first king, Leopold, was from Saxony and hooray, a constitutional monarchy was born! Belgian kings have pretty short life spans too due to sporting accidents. Taxes are incredibly high in the centre thanks to the country having four governments. The country is broken into three sections, Brussels, the French section, and the Flemish section, and each have their own government. Then there's another government governing those.

We then hopped off the bus and walked into the Grand Place to see the guild houses and the previous homes of Victor Hugo and Karl Marx. So much golden architecture in one place! Walking to a pub for free beer, we passed the little peeing boy/manneken pis, the most famous resident of Belgium. He's a small statue whose urinating into a fountain, previously the towns water supply. Poorer residents put him there to spite the richer people as it looks as though some one is peeing in their water supply.

Into Manneken Pis pub, we were given beer. There are over 450 Belgian beers. Every town has their own beer and every beer comes with its own style of drinking glass. So our tour guide was from Antwerp, so he had a mahogany coloured beer in a fish bowl style glass, as that's the Antwerpian style (I made that word up). We were given cherry beer, which is the Brussels beer. It tasted like a cherry soft drink with a bit of a beer aftertaste. Pretty yummy! It's actually not illegal to drink alcohol in the streets of Belgium, so we were given plastic cups so we could still walk and explore on our own. Mum and I took ours out into the streets and headed for the food section. There was quite a fair bit of Greek food, but we opted for a wood fired pizza place which was super delish. Then headed back to the Grand Place for Beligan waffles and chocolate buying (6 boxes for 9,90 euros). We shared a strawberry and chocolate waffle. Mum and I have been sharing most of the food we eat. Dinners, cakes, most food to avoid getting bus bums.

Back to the hotel then at about 10:30pm. This is a very different tour to the last one I did haha. In bed at midnight!