Adieu Bruxelles

This is my final night in this lovely city of Brussels and I am sad to see it go. The days have been relaxed and I have seen many things, smelled many things and experienced many things that this place has to offer, though I have not seen nearly all.

Yesterday was spent walking outside of the tourist area that is so conveniently close to where I am staying. Brussels looks much larger on the maps than it is. You could walk a circle around the downtown in maybe one hour. I find it almost laughable that they have a metro system here because it seems in excess of what is necessary, though if I lived here I would probably not want to walk everywhere, and I certainly would not want to drive. Although the locals seem to have very keen driving skills, not including their devastatingly poor parking skills, I do not think that I would want to bother owning a car with so many little streets and cobbled streets. It just feels as if it would be immensely more difficult to drive around than to walk or take transit.

I spent a good deal of time sitting at the botanical gardens located in the more northern part of the downtown. It was nice to watch people as they were taking their lunches into the grounds and having small picnics with their colleagues and friends. Afterward I tried to lose myself in the streets around the park which I was not successful at because no matter how much I walked I always ended up coming back to where I started. Again it is a very small place.

I have taken many more pictures than I have been able to share. Some of my favorites from this place involve the graffiti and murals that seem to be everywhere. There are a whole series of murals on the sides of buildings involving the characters from Tin Tin. It is fun to be walking down a small road and suddenly be staring at a massive piece of art that is related to something so familiar to me.

In the evening I tried to find a place that I had read about that you can see a beautiful panorama of the city from. It is on the top of a parking structure and although I found it my plans were thwarted when I realized it was probably not the best idea to go to the top of parking lot, alone, in the evening, in a city I am not familiar with. I would have liked to have seen the view but it is better to be safe.

Today the sun was out in full force but I unfortunately was not. I had been feeling under the weather the day before and I was still not in the best place when I awoke. It is hard to get a good rest here because it stays light much later than I am accustomed to and also becomes much brighter earlier. I have awoken 2 days in a row at 4am and thought that it was 8 in the morning.

In the afternoon I was able to meet up with my friend's friend that lives in Brussels, Nonna. She was very gracious to spend some time taking me around and showing me some of the sites that I had not yet managed to get to. She also told me some of the beautiful history behind the older buildings and structures. It seems like very stone here has a story or a purpose behind it.

Eventually we had to part ways and I found myself wandering back into Grand Place for one last glimpse of it area before I left. One thing that I had not noticed before was the smell. Intensified by the heat, the nauseating smell of chocolate and waffles almost overwhelmed me. I can appreciate a person's love for these foods but to have what seemed like endless shops filled with chocolate mixed with endless tourists eating their ridiculous waffles left me wanting very little to partake in either of these things. I will admit, I will leave Brussels without having one of the tourist waffles. I am sorry to disappoint but I just could not bring myself to eat the monstrous things covered in whipped cream, ice cream, nutella, fruit and whatever else they could manage to stuff on it. It just felt wrong to me. I know, I am a disappointment but I can live with that.

I returned to the hostel, packed my things, got ready for tomorrow journey. Though it is not far to go it is still another day of travel. When I felt everything was ready, I walked outside decided that tonight would be the night I would partake in what seems to be a Belgian tradition of fast food; fries. There are street carts are all over the city selling this delicacy and there is one located conveniently beside the hostel. So, I walked over and ordered a small plate of fries with mayo and sat down to watch the local hooligans practice their skate tricks across the street. In the background I could hear accordion music and realized that one of the young men was playing as his friends biked and skated.

This is where I sat enjoying my fries, listening to music, reflecting on the last days and taking in my last moments of this city of Brussels.