How very Belgique!

The flight to Brussels lasted less than 60 minutes and we just couldn't get over that. We spent more time in Hamburg airport! It's still a bit of a shock to be in another country after such a short travel time. And once we arrived at our hotel (which was a bit out of town) we felt like we were back to something we knew about - all things French! Matt was delighted. I think it was more to do with French pastries.

Our hotel was about 20 minutes out of the centre of Brussels but it was worth it. The room was much much better than a dodgy digs in Hamburg and the hotel backed onto a park; a very beautiful park. As the seasons are changing the leaves were falling and were a mixture of oranges and greens. It really was relaxing sitting and watching people walking through the park with their dogs. Better them walking in the freezing than us! Ha! But no, it was pretty.

We only had two nights and we arrived pretty late-ish from our flight so we really only had a full day to explore the city and we knew what we wanted to do - visit the Grand Place, drink Belgian beer, eat Belgian chocolate, and have a croque monsiour/madame for old times sake! And we managed to do all that *and* meet a nutter at an Irish bar (as you do!).

Grand Place was literally that - a big open plaza with a grand looking church and old buildings surrounding it. Little alley ways led off the plaza in all directions which reminded us a lot of France and it's alley ways. We went exploring and found lots and lots of chocolatiers, everywhere, man I was in heaven! And of course to go with the chocolatiers there were lots of pubs, Matt was in heaven! Sounds like the best place for the both of us!

After ticking everything off our list we decided to spend the evening in a tiny Irish pub we found and that's were we met our very own nutter. He just had to find the only empty seat at the bar which was next to me, didn't he? Some guy from Essex who had just got a new job, was having problems with his wife, had two kids and a bit of a drinking problem. We got to know him well, before we downed our drinks and made up an excuse to get out of there! And when we left the pub we realised that (a) it was dark and (b) we were starving. So we did what all good tourists do in this situation, we headed for the nearest Maccas! Ha!

We we had a fun time in Brussels and although we'd heard it was supposed to be a "boring city" we weren't bored. Although in saying that we didn't stay very long. I'm sure we'll go back, it's French enough for Matt but not too French for me. A nice compromise!

We then caught a train for another unplanned stop on our trip...Amsterdam.