Belg-dumb.

Well, the day started off pretty good. We had a delish breakfast of toast with Nutella (or Nutella with toast, depends on your point of view) among other things. For those who are unfamiliar, Nutella is the most delicious chocolate-hazlenut spread that is found everywhere in the world except for the US, for some unknown reason. It's basically the second best thing in the entire world, second only to our beds. Rachael discovered the most wonderful combination of bananas with Nutella, and guess what??? Katie tried it too! (That's right, JL, she ate a banana). It had been about 20 years since Katie voluntarily ingested a banana and this time she dove right in! Well, she was only able to handle about half of it, but if you spread enough Nutella on there it's not too shabby. Here are photos of our wonderful breakfast:

This is how Rachael looks during breakfast.

This is how Katie looks during breakfast.

Giving the banaynay a chance.

She really did it! Gross, but we had to prove it.

*Note - while taking this picture, our host, Karel, told us to "stop acting like Americans!" We all had a good laugh.

She survived!

We were planning to take a day trip to Bruges today but we didn't get to see very much yesterday so we decided to stick around Brussels and learn a thing or two about the city since neither of us know anything about this place other than chocolate and waffles. While wandering we found the Triumphal Arch in the Parc du Cinquantenaire (thanks MAK!)

We set out to take the tram to the Royal Museum of Fine Arts. So we took the tram. And then another one. And then another one. It took us about twelve thousand years and we still couldn't find the dadgum museum. The maps were impossible to read and there was not a single person interested in helping us find our way. Finally, we threw in the towel and got a cab to take us to the museum. He dropped us off at the Palace of Fine Arts, not the Museum of Fine Arts. There's a difference. Luckily, that difference is only about a 5-minute walk. So after about three hours, we finally got where we were trying to go. We got to see a George Seurat painting that Rach was really excited about and nobody told us we couldn't take pictures, so:

When we finished perusing the art, we headed to the museum cafe only to find it closed two hours before the sign said it was supposed to close. So we walked out to find some grub because we were both getting very hungry and very grumpy. We remembered hearing about a neat terrace restaurant on top of a different museum that we passed so we went in there to grab something to eat. When we got up to the terrace, we found a table with a fantastic view and began perusing the menu, which they did not have an English copy. When we asked if they did, the waitress was really mean about it and got us our drinks and never came back. We finally flagged down a different server and placed our orders. She left and immediately came back to the table to tell us that the kitchen was closed (also about an hour before the sign said they were to close).

Here's the view from that restaurant:

At this point, we were really grumpy, hungry and tired and didn't care where we ate as long as we ate. So we made our way back to the Grand Place and found a (somewhat) tourist-friendly restaurant for food. We had a pretty good meal, but both were pretty ready to check out of Brussels. Before heading back to the hostel for the evening, we decided we just had to find that lil' dude pissin': Manneken Pis

We found him!

History lesson (compliments of Mary Alston Killen and wikipedia):
Manneken Pis is his name (Dutch for little man urinating). There are several legends behind this statue, but the most famous is the one about Duke Godfrey III of Leuven. In 1142, the troops of this two-year-old lord were battling against the troops of the Berthouts, the lords of Grimbergen, in Ransbeke (now Neder-over-Heembeek). The troops put the infant lord in a basket and hung the basket in a tree to encourage them. From there, the boy urinated on the troops of the Berthouts, who eventually lost the battle. Ta da! Don't the Belgians have so much to be proud of? My personal favorite depiction of Mannekin Pis is on bottles of coke. Love how they incorporate the coke swish with the act of urination. Hilarious. - MAK

It's not that this is a bad place, don't get us wrong. We both just had a rough day. This is the first non-English speaking country that we've visited and we had a hard time getting around. It also seems that outside of Grand Place, this place isn't very American tourist-friendly. We haven't encountered many Americans at all, and that throws us even farther out of our comfort zone. We're happy to have each other, but we miss you guys too! We were reminded and comforted by this quote we found a while back by Cesare Pavese:

"Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things - air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it"

Well said, Cesare, well said.

XOXO K&R

Belgian Waffles, yum!