Brussels

We flew into Brussels on Saturday morning. We had to get up very early for our flight at like 4 or so and walk the 40 minutes to the train station because the buses don't run in Siena at night. We thought that the girls were going to miss the train, but they made it just in time and we got to the airport and settled in like we always do. We flew into Charleroi, which is 40 minutes south of Brussels so we had to buy the ticket to the central station. We got out into the center Brussels and Oz had given me a ton of stuff to do while we are there. We checked into our hostel, which is the coolest one I have ever stayed at. It had a cool lobby and bar downstairs and our room was really nice and I wasn't worried about people taking my stuff like later in the trip. We left here and went exploring, we saw the really big palace and then got into the middle of town and there was a huge parade going on. I don't remember the name offhand but I will when I get back, but it was just like people who dressed in the same theme and made their floats out of papier mache. There were fish and pirates and skeletons and tall people but mainly pirates. We left here and got down the best part of the trip: Eating. We went and got the famous Brussels fries, covered in sauce, I got Samurai sauce which was pretty hot. Then we got a belgian waffle for dessert, it was unreal. We walked around a bunch and then headed out of town to see the Atomium which housed the 1958 World's Fair. It was cool but it was closed by the time we got there. Apparently it has simulations of many European countries in it. It is hard to describe, just check it out online. Then we went back and started to watch the sunset next to the justice palace, but we were all pretty tired from the day and took a nap. We woke up and decided we didn't want to go out but we wanted to sample the famous Belgian beer that we had heard about earlier when we where checking out the Mannekin Pis, which is the symbol of Belgium. It is a tiny statue of a little boy peeing, and was kind of funny. But we went to a place across the street for our first taste of the beer. I had the Gueze, which is a sour beer. It was really good. Well that night John and I went out and bought a bunch of beer each so we could really test all of the different kinds. Apparently they are much higher alcohol content but you can't taste it, because the next morning did not find us very well.