Brussels 5

Trip Day 13 - November 10th - Brussels Day 5

This was my LAST FULL DAY IN THE BENELUX - Tuesday the 11th, I will take the train at 7:30 AM to Amsterdam Schiphol Airport and my flight leaves at 1 PM. Through the magic of the globe, I will arrive at 6:30 on Tuesday. 

This was to be cerebral day - I had 2 things scheduled at the European Parliament:

The first was a talk in the morning with a guide. The second was a self-guided tour. When I got to the Parliament, they didn't let me in because I didn't bring my passport. My Georgia driver's license wasn't sufficient. Luckily, I was 30 minutes early so got an Uber to take me back to my hotel, wait for me while I grabbed my passport, then return. I was 5 minutes late but the tour was starting late. There were about 50 people in it. We got an explanation how the whole system works. They have 720 members from all countries, divided in proportion to the number of citizens. The smallest countries like Malta, get a minimum of 6 representatives - Germany, the biggest gets around 90. The representatives are elected from each country by the citizens. They can be of different parties and when they get to the European Parliament, they can align with similar minded parties.  

There is an awful lot of bureaucracy and it got pretty boring to me, so much so, that I decided not to go back for the self-guided tour. I saw folks walking around with audio devices and it reminded me of the Choco-Story audio devices. Since I didn't listen to chocolate, was I really going to be patient to learn about the EU government? Nope!

Instead, I went bowling. I mainly went because I had gone to the trouble of taking my bowling shoes and there was NO WAY I was going to sacrifice the space in my luggage for something that I just took to Europe and back again without using. I chatted with people and taught them how to use the boards and the arrows to aim their ball. They actually did really much better.

After bowling, I felt I needed to have a waffle, but kept getting lost walking the wrong way and eventually just grabbed a cab back to the hotel because of the pouring rain. 

Back to the hotel, I had their waffles desert. It wasn't bad but not as good as the ones I got from Dandoy.