Euro Trip day 9
October 4th - Saturday
"The Day of the Boot"
We headed into a touristy part of Brussels nearby our hotel late in the morning. The area was the Grand Place. What appeared to be big old government buildings with a wide open plaza. Surrounding the area was lots of pedestrian friendly (or only) streets for shopping and dining. Some streets were as narrow as the small pedestrian streets of the Mosel River towns. It being a Saturday, and we later found out a festival day (White Night), it was pretty busy everywhere.
This used to be an outdoor street that was covered over and re-"paved" with marble.
Chock-full of restaurants. Oh, and seafood stands - mostly mussels. Smelled GREAT! yuck.
We tracked down the bar I was interested in checking out - the Delirium Cafe. (Delirium is the beer with the pink elephant logo). Delirium was situated in a small alley off-shoot of a popular pedestrian only restaurant strip. On one side of the alley was Delirium, the other was another bar owned by the same folks, dedicated to hard alcohol. Something like 200 whiskeys, 100 tequilas, 50 vodkas, something like that.
Delirium Cafe itself was a multi-leveled bar. The top area is an 'on tap' only area, where the lower, more basement feeling area has only 4-6 taps, but with 2004 beers. Yes, Two Thousand and Four beers. The menu is a book.
That book behind the glass is the open menu.
This is the bottom level, bottle area.
It was early, before lunch, so we pretty much had the bar to ourselves. I talked a bit with the bartender, got some recommendations, and drank a bunch of beer.
The glass actually says "Bush" on it, hence my skepticism.
Then it was time to actually eat something (we had the free hotel breakfast as usual of course). We bumped into an Indian restaurant and I advocated strongly for it. One thing desperately lacking in all the food we had been eating is SPICE. I don't honestly know how I survived this long without spicy food. jossel had a nice conversation with the proprietor in Hindi - he was Pakistani. Gave us a little insight into the small South Asian population in Brussels - pretty new he said.
After lunch we hit a grocery store to pick up some Belgian chocolate. jossel thinks these may be presents to people, but I think this is silly. Then back to the hotel for a bit.
Later on we wander the streets of Brussels looking for other recommended beer venues. We fail at this miserably so we give up and go back to the place with 2004 beers - I mean why not! It isn't like we'll run out of things to try!
Only 250!
By the time we get back to the Delirium Cafe, it's getting more full. I wanted a bar seat since they had no wait staff - bar service only. But the only bar seats were upstairs in the tap only area, so we did that.
Of fifty thousand attempts, one of these actually came out ok!
It was pretty interesting, the place got more full by the minute. It seemed like everyone who came up to the bar for a drink spoke a different language - we heard English, Spanish, French, Italian, and German. However, some of that German was probably Flemish - but without seeing the two vowels in a row I can't distinguish it.
We had some tasty beers. jossel really liked the Kasteel Rouge, an 8% dark red beer. She described it in our notes as "cherry lambic, barely tastes like booze. Dark brown color with red highlights seen through the light. Refreshing Taste". At some point my beer notes got less orderly and disappeared all together. A quick list of beers I noted: Rulles Triple (I know I had some other Rulles beers too, no notes), Oerweir, Chouffe Houblon, Waterloo tripel blond, La Gauloise blond, Bersalis, and Barbar.
Anyhow, after a bit of this and no dinner I was ready to head out. But, that is when jossel decided we needed The Boot.
She had observed another couple drinking out of a large glass shaped like a boot, and then leaving with it. The boot had the cute little Delirium pink elephant logo on it, and she decided she must have it. The question was, what kind of beer should go in this 36oz monstrous beer glass. I think perhaps we should take the safe, lower alcohol beer route. But no, she insists if she is going to help drink this beer in any significant quantity it must be the Kasteel Rouge - which as you may recall is 8%.
So we get a nice dark red boot. Alas! It has no Delirium logo! Oh no!
It takes a bit of time to drink, and at this point we are getting more friendly talking to people around us in various degrees of English and whatever we can understand of Spanish, French or whatnot.
We met this one fella who scoffed at our wussy little beer! He presented HIS boot. But turns out he had three guys helping him with it, cheater.
But when the last of the beer was over, it was REALLY time for dinner now. But not one to accept anything less, jossel insists on trying to get the boot with the logo.
The bar is pretty crowded at this point, and hearing is hard no matter what language. So jossel tries for French, having had good success en francais with the bartender. She says something like "Can we get the boot with the Delirium logo on it" in french. The bartender nods, takes the boot, and goes and proceeds to fill it up (to my horror) with Delirium beer. I'm so f#%ed.
I mean, it is an easy mistake "delirium logo on it" and "delirium in it". The rest of the night after that is a bit hazy. We (and by we I mean mostly me) managed to almost finish it. It was something like 9:30 at this point, and maybe? we were starting to worry that restaurants might start closing. So we took our boot (sans logo) on the road to food. I think I dumped it when we got down to the 'foot' - maybe. Probably wise.
Maybe I made a joke about stopping at the Pizza Hut we passed. This seems likely since on the way back from the Taj Mahal on my India trip the driver on his own dropped us at Pizza Hut for food (he may have understood English but he never let on) and it turned out to be a super awesome meal. So maybe I thought of this and joked about it.
It seems lame to go to an American chain in a foreign country - but sometimes it just hits the spot. Like after you have spent three days worried that the local food is going to make you have to get married while on a toilet. Or when you just drank two boots of beer.
Anyhow, next thing I knew I was sitting in a Pizza Hut, delighted that I was about to eat. And then, without even ordering!, a pizza arrived. Awesome. It was damn good too.
The only people having a better time that night than me were the three Germans that woke us up at 5am singing at the top of their lungs next door. Whoops, forgot the earplugs before going to bed!
"The Day of the Boot"
We headed into a touristy part of Brussels nearby our hotel late in the morning. The area was the Grand Place. What appeared to be big old government buildings with a wide open plaza. Surrounding the area was lots of pedestrian friendly (or only) streets for shopping and dining. Some streets were as narrow as the small pedestrian streets of the Mosel River towns. It being a Saturday, and we later found out a festival day (White Night), it was pretty busy everywhere.
This used to be an outdoor street that was covered over and re-"paved" with marble.
Chock-full of restaurants. Oh, and seafood stands - mostly mussels. Smelled GREAT! yuck.
We tracked down the bar I was interested in checking out - the Delirium Cafe. (Delirium is the beer with the pink elephant logo). Delirium was situated in a small alley off-shoot of a popular pedestrian only restaurant strip. On one side of the alley was Delirium, the other was another bar owned by the same folks, dedicated to hard alcohol. Something like 200 whiskeys, 100 tequilas, 50 vodkas, something like that.
Delirium Cafe itself was a multi-leveled bar. The top area is an 'on tap' only area, where the lower, more basement feeling area has only 4-6 taps, but with 2004 beers. Yes, Two Thousand and Four beers. The menu is a book.
That book behind the glass is the open menu.
This is the bottom level, bottle area.
It was early, before lunch, so we pretty much had the bar to ourselves. I talked a bit with the bartender, got some recommendations, and drank a bunch of beer.
The glass actually says "Bush" on it, hence my skepticism.
Then it was time to actually eat something (we had the free hotel breakfast as usual of course). We bumped into an Indian restaurant and I advocated strongly for it. One thing desperately lacking in all the food we had been eating is SPICE. I don't honestly know how I survived this long without spicy food. jossel had a nice conversation with the proprietor in Hindi - he was Pakistani. Gave us a little insight into the small South Asian population in Brussels - pretty new he said.
After lunch we hit a grocery store to pick up some Belgian chocolate. jossel thinks these may be presents to people, but I think this is silly. Then back to the hotel for a bit.
Later on we wander the streets of Brussels looking for other recommended beer venues. We fail at this miserably so we give up and go back to the place with 2004 beers - I mean why not! It isn't like we'll run out of things to try!
Only 250!
By the time we get back to the Delirium Cafe, it's getting more full. I wanted a bar seat since they had no wait staff - bar service only. But the only bar seats were upstairs in the tap only area, so we did that.
Of fifty thousand attempts, one of these actually came out ok!
It was pretty interesting, the place got more full by the minute. It seemed like everyone who came up to the bar for a drink spoke a different language - we heard English, Spanish, French, Italian, and German. However, some of that German was probably Flemish - but without seeing the two vowels in a row I can't distinguish it.
We had some tasty beers. jossel really liked the Kasteel Rouge, an 8% dark red beer. She described it in our notes as "cherry lambic, barely tastes like booze. Dark brown color with red highlights seen through the light. Refreshing Taste". At some point my beer notes got less orderly and disappeared all together. A quick list of beers I noted: Rulles Triple (I know I had some other Rulles beers too, no notes), Oerweir, Chouffe Houblon, Waterloo tripel blond, La Gauloise blond, Bersalis, and Barbar.
Anyhow, after a bit of this and no dinner I was ready to head out. But, that is when jossel decided we needed The Boot.
She had observed another couple drinking out of a large glass shaped like a boot, and then leaving with it. The boot had the cute little Delirium pink elephant logo on it, and she decided she must have it. The question was, what kind of beer should go in this 36oz monstrous beer glass. I think perhaps we should take the safe, lower alcohol beer route. But no, she insists if she is going to help drink this beer in any significant quantity it must be the Kasteel Rouge - which as you may recall is 8%.
So we get a nice dark red boot. Alas! It has no Delirium logo! Oh no!
It takes a bit of time to drink, and at this point we are getting more friendly talking to people around us in various degrees of English and whatever we can understand of Spanish, French or whatnot.
We met this one fella who scoffed at our wussy little beer! He presented HIS boot. But turns out he had three guys helping him with it, cheater.
But when the last of the beer was over, it was REALLY time for dinner now. But not one to accept anything less, jossel insists on trying to get the boot with the logo.
The bar is pretty crowded at this point, and hearing is hard no matter what language. So jossel tries for French, having had good success en francais with the bartender. She says something like "Can we get the boot with the Delirium logo on it" in french. The bartender nods, takes the boot, and goes and proceeds to fill it up (to my horror) with Delirium beer. I'm so f#%ed.
I mean, it is an easy mistake "delirium logo on it" and "delirium in it". The rest of the night after that is a bit hazy. We (and by we I mean mostly me) managed to almost finish it. It was something like 9:30 at this point, and maybe? we were starting to worry that restaurants might start closing. So we took our boot (sans logo) on the road to food. I think I dumped it when we got down to the 'foot' - maybe. Probably wise.
Maybe I made a joke about stopping at the Pizza Hut we passed. This seems likely since on the way back from the Taj Mahal on my India trip the driver on his own dropped us at Pizza Hut for food (he may have understood English but he never let on) and it turned out to be a super awesome meal. So maybe I thought of this and joked about it.
It seems lame to go to an American chain in a foreign country - but sometimes it just hits the spot. Like after you have spent three days worried that the local food is going to make you have to get married while on a toilet. Or when you just drank two boots of beer.
Anyhow, next thing I knew I was sitting in a Pizza Hut, delighted that I was about to eat. And then, without even ordering!, a pizza arrived. Awesome. It was damn good too.
The only people having a better time that night than me were the three Germans that woke us up at 5am singing at the top of their lungs next door. Whoops, forgot the earplugs before going to bed!