Full-on Bar-Hopping

And so begins the journey...

After a harrowing adventure at St. Pancras, where I was forced to bite the bullet and just buy to (additional) Eurostar tickets at an exorbitant price (who knew the InterRail pass didn't cover high speed trains?  Seriously?  Who reads that fine print?  This guy, from now on), we got on the fast train (it is rather quick, to be fair, and is the only way to get from the island [England] to the mainland [the rest of Europe]).  Sh*t, right? Oh well, as one of my tutees says all the ever-loving time, "YOLO".  

It was raining in Brussels, hence the umbrellas above, but we were in good spirits.  Maybe it had something to do with the champagne on the train ride?  No matter...we were glad to touch down on this first leg of the journey.     

We started off the day at this adorable, very European Christmas market.  We popped into a tented booze hut and drank the first of many Belgium beers.  It was delicious.  And this from a gal who NEVER, repeat NEVER drinks beer.  This is special beer, though.  I'll take it.

I didn't catch any photos in the large legion-like hall where we had a quick croque-monsieur and a few more brews.  Santa showed up though, along with some very jovial elves (I reckon they'd hit the Belgium beer as well), and all was good.  

From here, we swung back to the apartment where we were staying, very conveniently located in the pentagonal city centre.  Our host fed us a beer to get us started, we changed out of our somewhat soggy clothes, and thought it best to fill our bellies.  Before dinner though, it was out for some more beers (the common theme of Belgium, thinks you.  Undoubtedly you would be correct).  

This delightful place had the most gorgeous wall colour (funny the things you notice, right?), a great looking bar and glasses that matched every individual beer, and delightful staff.   

To stick with the goal of eating mussels in Brussels, we headed down the street to this delightful little brasserie.  Mussels were pretty delicious and quite plentiful, as was the plate of cheese we consumed wholeheartedly beforehand.  Naturally, beer was on tap.  We opted for Judas (appropriately biblical for this time of year) and another of the save-the-monks beers that our host had recommended: trappistes.  They were both equally delicious, as the picture of Jamie may suggest.

We made one more bar-hopping stop at the restaurant our host had recommended, before heading back, hearing the news about how to get to the station and to Paris the following day (more unplanned headache, I'm afraid), and grimacing at the thought of waking up at 7.  Yikes.  Somehow, though, we managed.  Bye, bye, rainy Brussels.  Hello, beautiful Paris xx