Gaufres and Frites!

My most recent adventure: to the “Europe’s Capital,” that being Brussels. I didn’t know this but apparently it is in fact the capital of Europe, since it is home to most of the EU headquarters and such. Anyway, I only did a short 2 day trip to Belgium so this shall be a short one.

We arrived on Friday night and of course headed out to see the town. The life night of Brussels was very lively, the streets full of people partying (and quite a few drunken teenagers, even though it was only about 10pm). We found a nice little bar ourselves, and enjoyed a couple beers. We had quite the interesting chat with a Belgian man, who spent about 30 minutes describing the different beers of Belgium to us. He then proceeded to have a just as lengthy conversation about sex, where he then dragged his girlfriend off to somewhere to do I don’t want to know what.

First thing in the morning I headed to the train station to pick up my friend LINDA! She had done an exchange in Calgary last year, and now was studying in the Netherlands so I thought, why not!? It was a little random and spontaneous that both our schedules ended up working out to meet up in Brussels, but I was happy we were able to. =)

Once the group was all together, we were on a mission.

Mission: find WAFFLES!!
Steps taken: Two streets down and one left turn
Status: Mission complete!
Lessons learned: Belgian waffles are even better than expected! Steaming buttery batter, coated in some sugary goodness topped with melting creamy delight. Melt in your mouth deliciousness. This would not be the first for us to have throughout the weekend.

Delicious breakfast waffles with Linda. :)

Although Belgium is known for its cloudy skies we were lucky to have blue overhead for most of the day. We took it easy, walking around seeing the main sites, picking up waffles and fries along the way. In the afternoon, the rest of the group went to a brewery tour, while Linda and I headed to the Atomium! It was really neat. An atom magnified 168 billion times. We were able to walk from one sphere to another through escalators and stairs. Appealed nicely to my nerdy side =P

Atomium in Brussels

On Sunday we decided to experience a smaller Belgian town, so we took a train to the beautiful town of Gent. It was based more on the Flemish ancestry of Belgium… Belgium is bilingual; there is a Flemish (Dutch) area and then a Latin (French) area. Gent was a very beautiful little town to spend the day walking around and enjoying the buildings and cobblestone streets. We of course had some more waffles and fries throughout the day, never getting any less delicious.

Waffle display. Mmmmmmmm. Mouth watering-ly delicious.

After the quick, but pleasing trip to Belgium, we headed home late Sunday night. Arriving home at 1:30am was a bit torturous, because after having sent home the Chinese licensees last week, I had to be into work at 6am Monday morning to assist with a meeting with the Japanese licensees currently in town. With all these Asians to babysit, I’ve been working quite a few 11+ hour days recently. Keeps my job interesting though. =)