Day Seven (April 18, 2009)

I have decided that Brussels, while an important city as it houses the EU and the European Parliament, is not the city for me. I haven't found much in this city that interests me. This morning Molly and I set out to find the famous Mannekin Pis, a statue fountain of a little boy peeing. When we found it it was slightly disappointing and really quite small, it couldn't have been more than a foot and a half tall on its perch. We found our Belgian waffles and set out people watching. We have tried to have the local drink and famous food of every place we have gone. In Berlin we had beer, got chocolate, and had a bratwurst. In Paris we drank wine, got crepes, and had drinks at a cafe. In Brussels we got chocolate, beer, waffles, and fries. I found out that french fries were actually invented in Belgium but popularized by the French. We got pretty bored pretty quickly today and ended up doing a lot of people watching and wandering around Brussels. In our wanders we came upon an English bookshop. We spent a considerable amount of time poking around there. I ended up buying a copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle because I found a section of classics for between 4 and 5 euro. I chose between that, Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, and Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I knew that I needed something to read to keep me busy at the airport tonight seeing as Molly and I are spending the night here. Getting to the airport was a trick though. We caught the metro to the train station and then couldn't figure out where the shuttle was going to pick up to go the hour drive to the airport. We thought we had missed the last one and didn't know what to do so we asked information at the train station and he directed us straight to the bus, which was in the opposite direction we had been looking and even though it was supposed to leave at 8:30 it was 8:45 and it was still there, we actually waited until 9:00 to leave and Molly and I ended up being the only ones on the shuttle. We are now in the airport with many other travelers spending the night. It is 2:15 am and right before I wrote this I woke up from my nap since Molly and I are only sleeping one at a time for an hour at a time. I can't wait to be back in Maynooth!