Brussels

We hopped on Eurostar at Waterloo (only about 20 minutes away by bus). While waiting at the station we discovered by reading the Metro newspaper that the weather forecast for Brussels was 0 degrees with fog. Colder than we were expecting and much colder than London!

We arrived at Gare du Midi station and met up with Yvonne (one of Grace's old school friends).

We caught the metro back to her place and met Andrew (Yvonne's boyfriend) and dropped our bags off before heading back out. We realised at this point that the weather forecast was right and it was indeed very cold!

We walked to the St Michel Cathedral and walked through it. Beautiful stained glass windows.










We then headed towards Grand Place and walked through Galleries St Hubert which had lots of chocolatiers. It started snowing very lightly at this point. Pretty cold.









We checked out Grand Place before finding a place down a side street for lunch. They have lots of restaurants selling a €15 3 course lunch.

After lunch, headed to the Christmas markets. The atmosphere was still very festive and it was nice to experience a little bit of cold European Christmas.

Yvonne showed us a landmark - the Mannekin Pis. There is a myth behind the pissing boy that is something to do with putting out a fire and saving the city. We're not convinced, but this little guy was attracting a lot of attention!









Went to supermarket to pick up some stuff for dinner. Yvonne and Andrew were making a traditional Belgium dish for us which consisted of endives wrapped in ham and baked in a cheesy sauce. It didn't turn out as well as she'd hoped but we thought it tasted good!

The next day we slept in and eventually got up and headed to the Musical Instrument Museum in a beautiful Art Noveau building. It was a large museum with lots of different types of instruments. Visitors are given wirelesss headphones where they can listen to snippets of music played on the various instruments at various listening points.

After the museum we headed to the Palais de Justice. We walked past the arts museum on the way as well as one of the royal palaces (though the royal family don't actually live here, they stay at another palace on the outskirts of the city).


Headed back to Grand Place to get to the supermarket to buy some stuff for dinner that night.
As it was really cold, we didn't stay out for long.

On our last day, the weather got better, there was sun and it was warmer. We checked out the comic museum - for those who didn't know Belgium is the home of Tin Tin. The museum was interesting though it contained way too much information.

After the musuem we headed to the Christmas markets and grabbed some bratwurst for lunch. We also bought some chocolate from Neuhaus chocolatier. Then we headed to Parc du Cinquantaire for a look around before it was time to head back to pack up.

We met Yvonne for dinner before leaving on the Eurostar.