Bruxelles!

Saturday was our day trip to Brussels! How awesome is it that we can just go to another country on a whim?? It's literally about 20 minutes to the border by train. Very cool. First stop when we arrived: the Atomium! I was really excited. It's thid huge structure that was built for the 1958 World's Fair in Brussels. Basically, it's a giant atom--I believe an iron atom blown up to 165 billion times its size. Either 4 or 5 of the 9 spheres are open to the public and the top gets you some cool views of the fair grounds and Brussels. Very cool! 

After our Atomium visit, we went into the main part of the city and saw Grande Place. So amazing! This was the first point in my Europe trip so far that I really felt like I was in Europe. I walked into Grande Place and saw all the ornate gothic buildings, gold gilding and cobblestones...I finally hit the honeymoon stage. :-)

After admiring Grande Place, we went into a coffee and waffle house and finally had gaufres! Wow. Most delicious thing I've ever eaten. The whole time was basically a party in my mouth. No words to even describe the amazingness.

After our gaufres, we went over to the Chocolate Museum where we saw how Belgians make such delicious chocolate and even got some free samples! Seriously, those Belgians know what's up when it comes to chocolate. Completely amazing.

Next up was a brisk walk through the expensive shops in les Galeries Royals. Very pretty, but waaay too expensive. Nice to walk through though. :-) Then we went by Rue des Bouchers, which is a tiny little street loaded with restaurants that we ended up eating dinner on. Past this point was a race against the clock...a little more hectic that I would have hoped for. We basically ran around Brussels looking at lots of buildings and stuff, but I found it kind of hard to appreciate all of it. We saw the EU Building, which was actually pretty cool, but it's not open to the public. We walked up towards the Grande Palais, but unfortunately it was closed. By this point it had also started to rain quite a bit, so it was getting pretty interesting. We walked through les Jardins Cinquantenaire, which would have been a lot nicer had it been better weather and not so treacherously icy on the paths. We wandered down by la Musée de l'Armée through the arch, then headed back to Rue des Bouchers for dinner. I was happy to order moules et frites with a beer for what might be the most Belgian meal conceivable.

After dinner we hopped over to a huge café for a coffee before running to make our train back to Lille. My cappuccino was delicious, and so was the Belgian butter wafer that came with it...mmm. Overall, it was a very successful day and I'm glad we were able to go! Here's a link to all of my pictures from Brussels.