Brussels, Day Two
IMG_3709, originally uploaded by pilotkip.
To beat jet lag, try to force yourself onto the local schedule. Your second day will probably be a lot easier than the first day. Hopefully you were able to sleep in a bit, and not wake up at 3am local time. Still, you may feel like you're walking through molasses as the afternoon and evening progress. Again, keeping yourself active is a good way to keep going. We decided to go explore down-town.
A quick ride on the Metro can get you pretty much anywhere in the city. Just remember to take change, since the ticket machines don't take paper money (or maybe I was just confused.)
Our first destination was the Grand Place in the center of Brussels. This place is big. I mean really big. I quickly realized that any picture I took would fail to capture the stunning beauty of this place. Everywhere I looked were ornate decorations within larger decorations.
Instead of my fruitless attempt to capture the grandeur, I recommend checking out this 360 degree panorama of the place.
You might come across a statue of some famous person. Look closely, it may just be a street performer. After you get your picture taken with him, he'll demand a few euros. Make sure you count your change, because he'll short you. This picture cost me 3 euro.
I was glad to finally have some coins so I could buy metro tickets.
Around the corner from the Grand Place is a rather diminutive statue of a boy peeing. This is probably not something that you encounter very often, so it's worth it to take a picture of the Mannequin Pis.
One thing to remember, your digestive tract has no clue that you're in a different time zone. Be careful what you eat. Pick something light. We found a restaurant called Tapas Locas, which means you can order a bunch of small dishes to sample. This particular Tapas served local dishes. It was tasty and easy on the belly.
After two days of hearing French spoken, a strange thing began to happen. Small snippets of French from my school days started to surface. So, I took this occasion to attempt to have a short exchange in French, after warning our waiter that I was going to make this attempt. I would ask our waiter what their best dessert was.
"Qu'est ce que votre dessert moyeur?" I blurted out. Our waiter looked perplexed. He went to the bar, and called Stephanie (the barmaid) over.
"What do you want?" she asked.
"Qu'est ce que votre dessert moyeur?" I repeated.
She looked at me funny, and asked, "Are you speaking english?"
"No!" I said, "I was trying to ask what your best dessert was."
"Oh," she said, "I'm from New York. I can't speak French!"
Stephanie
(In case you were wondering, I should have said "Qu'est ce que votre meilleur dessert?")
And the answer: Tarte Tatin avec glace vanille. I *strongly* recommend this!
On the return trip, I bought two tickets, one for my colleague and one for myself. Once we were on the train, I realized that I still had the tickets. Not every station has ticket gates for you to walk through. I learned later that there was an orange box on the wall somewhere that I should have deposited the tickets. Oh well, the city still got my money, and the tickets ended up going through the laundry before I was able to use them for another trip.