Day 13 - Brussels

We slept in until 9am, it was heaven. Kevin then worked on the Amsterdam posts and I lounged around. We finally left the hotel at 10:30. Our hotel appears to be in a business district, and none of the neighboring restaurants were open. It wasn't until we got close to the center of town that we found some place to eat. Before breakfast, we stepped in to a little chocolate shop and each had two pieces...what a great way to start the day! Breakfast was a croissant, coffee and orange juice...perfect! We decided to follow another of Rick Steve's walking tours (he hasn't led us wrong yet). We made our way to the Grand Place. Once there we spent some time looking at the Town Hall, the King's House and the guild halls. We went to the Brewery museum (the museum is kind of silly, but it was a good excuse for a beer). We then did "choco crawl", starting with Godiva, followed by Neuhaus and then Galler. The line was really long for Leonidas (and I had had some at Laakdal), so I stepped across the street to Elisabeth Brussels. I picked up some chocolate for An (my apologies to everyone else, it wouldn't last until I could get it to you, and she is 8.5 months pregnant) After Neuhaus, we had to stop for another beer.... We then continued to the first "covered shopping mall", Galeries Royale St Hubert, about halfway through we turned down "restaurant row". Since we were still full from the chocolate and beer we kept walking. Next was the church of St. Nicolas, followed by a waffle from a street stand..man was that good. We walked around the stock market and then headed for Maniken Pis.

Still feeling pretty strong, we thought we could take on another walking tour, this one of Upper Town. We made it to the last standing section of the original wall around Brussels and then headed up the hill. We stopped for lunch....and came to the realization that we both needed a nap. So we caught a cab back to the hotel. We didn't mean to sleep for so long, but ended up sleeping from about 4 to 7. Now we are trying to figure out where to go to dinner.

Tomorrow we are on to Brugges.