Brussels Sprouts Food

July 26th, 2015

We were only in Brussels for a day so we knew we had to make the most of it! Despite more rain and cold weather, we walked around the city and it was truly charming. We found the main square and then continued walking to find the Manneken Pis statue, which comes up in every list of top Brussels attractions we could find. We knew we found the 2-foot statue by the crowd gathered around it! It was humorous to see so many people trying to push their way to a better view of this little boy peeing. Lucky for us, around the corner was a shop that we heard had the best waffles. We grabbed a couple, one plain and one topped with chocolate, strawberries, and chocolate. Both were delicious. We found a small restaurant for lunch and enjoyed beef stew and meatballs, and of course fries with mayonnaise. Our waiter suggested we skip all the popular chocolate shops and walk a bit to find his favorite. We then made our way toward this and on the way stopped into Les Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert, an indoor shopping strip full of cute bookstores and chocolate shops.  While here we realized we were very close to another famous Brussels tourist attraction, Jeanneke Pis, a girl version of the previous peeing statue. Yes, these are both in fact, two of the top two places to visit in Brussels.

We kept walking through the rain until we came upon another square where we had to run across the tram crossing to Saint Jacques-sur-Coudenberg, a massive church that was closed to the public during our time there. It was then we remembered we only came to Brussels for the food so we moved onto to find the chocolate.

After a bit more of a rainy walk, we finally discovered the chocolate shop! Unfortunately, it was under construction and being freshly painted. A worker came outside to kindly let us know they were undergoing renovations and we would have to find another chocolatier to satisfy our sweet tooth.

The rain finally started to slow, so we decided to enjoy the rest of our day walking through the mist stopping in as many chocolate shops and enjoying the music of the square as much as possible. We ate some delicious food, saw beautiful pathways, and listened to the sounds of Brussels. At the end of the day, we were both a bit surprised at how dirty the city was compared to the idealistic images (graffiti everywhere) we had in mind, yet both were able to ignore this because we still enjoyed it so much!