Brussels 3

Trip Day 11 - November 9th - Brussels Day 3

I went on one of the best Walking and Tasting tours EVER with guide Tiago. (I try to go on food tours in every city I visit - the best tours teach you history as well as feed you). Of course he showed us the best places and our first stop was a chocolate shop. There are so many superlative chocolate shops here. He recommended some because you could only get their products in Brussels, but others sell in the States for less, for example Godiva.  

I didn't figure there was chocolate portion to this and there really wasn't a lot of food. Basically, chocolate, waffle (or fries), and beer. The best part was hearing the history of the city and of the Grand Place. Tiago was entertaining and funny. He told us a lot about the history of Brussels.  

Our second stop was for a waffle or Belgium Fries. Since I already had Belgium fries twice while here, I chose a waffle. Apparently it was a Liege waffle which is sweet and man, was it ever good!

The third part was beer. I don't like beer, don't like wine, and don't like cider. I am such a trouble-maker. Tiago gave us an interesting lecture about beer including the Trapper Beer which has to be made in a monastery by the Trapper Monks. Apparently, they started brewing AND drinking it to get around fasting restrictions. They could have a beer for breakfast and one for lunch without breaking their fast. I don't know what monks do, but I'm sure they were very happy doing it. 

We walked by the Mannequin Pis who was naked this day. Walking by on Sunday, he was dressed and there was a huge crowd. There are many stories about him (referred to as the baby) but all are a bit wonky. The funniest part was hearing about the baby being stolen a couple of times.  

I had signed up for the Hop-on/Hop-off Bus and figured I had a couple of hours and the entire ride was supposed to take 1 1/4 hours. Unfortunately, it got stuck in a major traffic jam. Apparently (I found this out the next day), a pedestrian got run over by a tram so everything was shut down. After almost 45 minutes of crawling a few hundred feet, I begged the driver to let me out so I could walk back to the hotel.  



In the evening, I went to another comedy show, this time at the Indonesian Cultural Center to see Pandji Pragiwaksono, who is quite famous in Indonesia with over 1.1 million followers on Instagram. It was a pretty good show.