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Published: September 13th 2010
Grote Markt
The old guild houses now host many cafes and eateries.We began the morning having breakfast with the other new tenants of the B&B, but no one spoke Then on to the bus to the train station. The train from Brugge was nice, and only about an hour. The hotel is literally 50 yars from the Brussels - Centraal station. The room is great, very elegant...though I already screwed up and moved some drinks around in the computerized mini-fridge and it charged me at least 10 euro thinking that I was drinking them. The front desk confirmed that this would be taken care of upon check out...oops. Who new that a fridge had billing capabilities?
Off to the Grote Markt (Grand Place) where all of the action is. Just as we remember it (we stopped in Brussels on a day tour from Holland about 5 years ago). All the guild houses, King's house, and town hall looking as they did hundreds of years ago. Filled with people, tourists mostly, and eateries, chocolates, and souvenier shops. From there we took Rick Steven's (the tour guide book we bought) tours of Brussels, both the Grand Place walk and the Upper Town walk. We are saving the museums for tomorrow, since they offer
a 24-hour pass here, though we did stop in the BOZAR museum b/c the hotel gave us complimentary passes.
Of course we at waffels (the best, that's no joke) and made our way eventually to Mannekin Pis, who we saw before, but this time he was in costume! Amazing how much attention that little guy gets. The onto some chocolate shopping. But the best part of all was finding a store I read about, De Bier Temple. They supposedly have the Holy Grail of beers...Westveleteren, which is the hardest to get Trappist beer (you have to make an appointment, sometimes months in advance, with the monastary to buy 1 case) and it's rated the best beer in the world by beeradvocate.com. At 9.95 euro for 11.2 ozs, I bought two of them...and yes I drank one this evening and I must say it was pretty good (I don't know about 10 euro good, but pretty good nonetheless).
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