Brussels

It's late here, and I'm tired, but here is a summary of our weekend in Brussels....As I mentioned, my mom and Art arrived on Friday. Friday night we drove to Brussels for a short weekend jaunt. We stayed in the Sablons area. (thank you to my in-laws for the fab recommendation! For any future brussels tourists among you, I highly recommend this area.) Saturday morning we meandered through a cute little antique street market, where I purchased the cutest little antique chocolate mold. A street vendor was selling escargot at the antique fair.



Throughout the day, we visited umpteen chocolate shops, where chocolate is truly elevated to an art form. One famous shop, (Whitters? Weimer? Witter? I can't recall the name at the moment, and don't feel like looking it up) had some kind of collaboration with Louis Vuitton and was making a chocolate shoe with the LV pattern. In addition, they created these mannequin heads with fancy hats out of chocolate. Here's one with the shoe on top:



We also visited the Grand Place, which was beautiful to see. On Sunday we went to the art museum where we saw some Breugels, etc.

Hmm, what else. Oh, brace yourself, this is weird. On Saturday, there was some kind of charity parade going on. It was the Queen's charity to benefit poor children, and dates back over 100 years. The thing is, the charity involved a bunch of white guys wearing black face and dressing up in these odd costumes, and carrying giant forks, spoons, whisks, and other larger-than-life utensils. I didn't take any pictures because I was really put off by the black face. Not to mention that these guys were everywhere we turned- it was like they were following us throughout the city, and it was pretty annoying. They were even coming into the restaurants and asking for donations. The funny thing was that of the 80 or so people dressed up like this, we saw the same individual guy several times in one day- he came into the restaurant where we were having lunch and then later, dinner, and we also saw him on the street. (What was odd was that we could recognize him specifically among all the many people dressed up in identical outfits). But- when he walked into the restaurant where we were having dinner, he and Art took one look at each other and greeted each other like old friends. Kinda had to be there, but it was pretty funny. Then the guy said in french to his co-worker (who was dressed identically), "I've seen this guy 3 times today!" At this point, we had to take a picture of him with Art. He is holding a small model manequinn piss (which was also saw in brussels).



So that's about it from brussels. Pissing status. Guys in blackface. Louis Vuitton chocolate shoe hats..... We had a great time. Here is a link to the rest of our pictures from the weekend. And here is one from the hotel that I just love: