Brussels

Our landlord, Pascal, kindly arranged for a taxi to pick us up at the apartment on Thursday morning to take us to the Gare du Nord for our trip to Brussels and on to Bruges.  The taxi arrived on time, but we managed to get probably the only slow taxi driver in all of Paris.  He chatted on his cell phone the entire time as he drove at an escargot’s pace through the city to the station.  Due to my extreme phobia of missing flights and trains we still arrived at the station with time to spare, which gave us extra time to sit around  stressing about getting our luggage on and off the train.  Schlepping our luggage from Paris to Brussels, Brussels to Bruges, Bruges to Brussels and Brussels to Amsterdam was the nightmare of the trip.  Dave was well into a bad cold by this time, and I could barely handle my own luggage.  I was able to successfully play the old lady card a number of times, which did help.  Several very nice young men came to my rescue on a number of occasions when I was struggling my bags.

Arriving in Brussels we had to figure out where to store our bags (by shoving them into foul smelling lockers), and how to catch another train for the 5 minute ride into the center of town.  Finally, we arrived at the Grand Place, the major sight in Brussels.  It was impressive, but I must say, after Paris it looked a bit worse for the wear and even slightly seedy.  After a quick once over of the Place, we walked the couple of blocks toward the peeing boy.  We sensed we might be approaching when all the store windows began featuring peeing boys of every description (most of them chocolate).  However, when we reached the boy himself we would have walked right by were it not for the small crown gathered around.  Talk about underwhelming.  He is tucked in a corner, above eye level, and is no more than 2 feet tall.  He was dressed (I guess for New Year’s Eve) in a snazzy top hat and tails and looked very spiffy.

Realizing nothing could top the peeing boy, we headed back to the station to pick up our luggage and catch a train to Bruges.  Altogether we spent less than 2 hours in Brussels, but it was well worth it to experience the world famous peeing boy.