To Brussels, To Brussels!
My niece Heidi has lived in Brussels for some years as a French-English translator for NATO. We had never visited her, so it was too good of an opportunity to pass up seeing her during our visit to Paris!
We went via the Thalys high speed train line which, as the link notes, reaches a top speed of about 300 km/hour (about 185 mph)--not too shabby! ;)
Heidi met us at the Brussels train station and we metro-ed to lunch at the Musical Instrument Museum, which has a great restaurant on the top floor with a wonderful view of the city!
To get there,
we passed through the city's central square. The most striking difference with Paris is the architecture, which is so ornate....
Here is an inner courtyard complete with friendly dog, at the back of which were mounted iron back-of-fireplace plaques (no word in English?) for sale. Pretty cool! :)
Here is the famed Manneken Pis statue, which, although small, always seems to fascinate people. Hey, so the little guy is taking a leak, what is so strange about that? ;)
Besides the architecture, the other immediate difference I noticed with Paris is that Brussels seemed more relaxed, not as frenzied. Perhaps it is because the city is smaller, and that is a good thing! It was a nice contrast.
I asked Heidi what she thought of the Belgian people, and she said they are very down-to-earth, which again is a good thing. She has made many friends among the local people. Btw, there are two official languages, French and Dutch! So we could continue to use our French, as limited as that might be (and Heidi did most of the talking! ;)
After lunch, we visited two of Brussels' best chocolate shops--Pierre Marcolini, Chocolatier, and Wittamer Chocolatier. Both boxes we purchased came with a detailed key to each of the varieties of chocolate, which are very gourmet and so rich you can't eat more than a piece or two at a time (which Kat says is a good thing! :)
Following that we went to sample another Belgian specialty, pommes frites (French fries)! We went to an outside stand named Maison Antoine, and found out from Heidi that the fries are from a specially developed fries potato, they are cooked twice to get extra crispy, and that there are many many sauces to choose from, most of which are mayonnaise based! My favorite, however, was a ketchup-curry sauce--yum! :)
We took the fries into a local bistro and washed them down with Belgian fruit beers (I had a regular Belgian lace beer, and it sure went down easily!).
We ended the day by seeing Heidi's new house, and then she dropped us at the train station and we were back in Paris a little after 10pm!
We went via the Thalys high speed train line which, as the link notes, reaches a top speed of about 300 km/hour (about 185 mph)--not too shabby! ;)
Heidi met us at the Brussels train station and we metro-ed to lunch at the Musical Instrument Museum, which has a great restaurant on the top floor with a wonderful view of the city!
To get there,
we passed through the city's central square. The most striking difference with Paris is the architecture, which is so ornate....
Here is an inner courtyard complete with friendly dog, at the back of which were mounted iron back-of-fireplace plaques (no word in English?) for sale. Pretty cool! :)
Here is the famed Manneken Pis statue, which, although small, always seems to fascinate people. Hey, so the little guy is taking a leak, what is so strange about that? ;)
Besides the architecture, the other immediate difference I noticed with Paris is that Brussels seemed more relaxed, not as frenzied. Perhaps it is because the city is smaller, and that is a good thing! It was a nice contrast.
I asked Heidi what she thought of the Belgian people, and she said they are very down-to-earth, which again is a good thing. She has made many friends among the local people. Btw, there are two official languages, French and Dutch! So we could continue to use our French, as limited as that might be (and Heidi did most of the talking! ;)
After lunch, we visited two of Brussels' best chocolate shops--Pierre Marcolini, Chocolatier, and Wittamer Chocolatier. Both boxes we purchased came with a detailed key to each of the varieties of chocolate, which are very gourmet and so rich you can't eat more than a piece or two at a time (which Kat says is a good thing! :)
Following that we went to sample another Belgian specialty, pommes frites (French fries)! We went to an outside stand named Maison Antoine, and found out from Heidi that the fries are from a specially developed fries potato, they are cooked twice to get extra crispy, and that there are many many sauces to choose from, most of which are mayonnaise based! My favorite, however, was a ketchup-curry sauce--yum! :)
We took the fries into a local bistro and washed them down with Belgian fruit beers (I had a regular Belgian lace beer, and it sure went down easily!).
We ended the day by seeing Heidi's new house, and then she dropped us at the train station and we were back in Paris a little after 10pm!