Mussels in Brussels!

This past weekend a group of friends took the Eurostar down to Brussels to go to the Christmas market.  I of course was also looking forward to the beer, mussels, and frites.  While living in Chicago I fell in love with Belgian food, where both the Hopleaf and Rootstock do it quite well.  The beers are strong and you never run out of varieties to try.

Brussels is just a 2 hour ride from London and we went Friday after work, arriving around 10PM - enough time to drop our goods at the hotel, take a little stroll, and get on over to the Delirium bar.  For those who are less familiar, Delirium is a well known Belgian beer with a pink elephant emblem and is quite the dance provoker (I'll omit the details on my spill which left me with a horribly bruised thigh and the video).

After a couple of those we were all ready to tackle those famous frites (fries typically served with mayo).  In no time we wondered upon a shop on the street and ordered huge paper cones - mine with "tartar".  Whoa, they do like their mayo ... and that night I did too.




The main square in Brussels, Grand Place, is breath taking.  I am officially making it my favorite plaza in Europe to date.  The cathedral is impressive (less so than others), but the other surrounding architecture is out of this world.

Though touristy enough, the pubs and shops surrounding the square felt very authentic, offering up Belgian lace and tapestries, as well as chocolate and waffles.

I had never heard of little Manneken Pis, but he is quite the hero in this town.  A statue/fountain from the early 1600s of a little boy doing his business is certainly the most popular tourist site in town. Every prestigious chocolatier has molds of him and every not so prestigious grocer has some pretty flattering corkscrews of him.  Those in the know would know there is also a little sister statue across the Grand Place, which some peeps on the street were happy to point out to us.

The Christmas market offered up some good scenery, interesting goods, yummy smells, hot mulled wine, and one particularly good Christmas gift (shhhh).

Seems like there are so many other topics to cover, like the rainbow over the city the last afternoon, the coordinated Christmas light show broadcast repeatedly on the cathedral, the bizarre street of seafood restaurants with picture menus and plastic plants, the sparkle tree, the interesting hotel room, the fact that it is the comic capital of the world and the Smurfs were invented there ...  great trip.

I am also sharing the link to my friend Shannon's blog, as she also has some great pics.