Day 7, Saturday April 20th! Here’s my short recap from Instagram:

Day 7 (April 20) – Amy (@crawshawamy) was our tour guide! Amy is a blogging friend of mine from the states who’s lived in Belgium for 30+ years. I met her in person once in the states and had such a great time I made sure Belgium would be a stop on our trip!

Amy took us all over and it was fabulous being with a local who knew what was what (and the language)! Thank you Amy!!! She and Dunja (they’d never met before) got on fabulously and we all had a great day together!

MY LAST RUN IN EUROPE

Saturday April 20th started with my final run in Europe. I was so happy I got to run in each country I visited! It’s such a unique way to take in the city.

I had planned this route out because it went to a park and back, not realizing this was where Amy was going to take us later in the morning. That worked out perfectly, because I was running by all the buildings wondering what they were, but not stopping to figure it out. I did stop to check the map, and to catch my breath – I did not realize Brussels was so hilly (at least compared to Amsterdam and Dresden). Whoa!

Heh. 

A BIT OF TIME TO KILL

When I got back to the hotel room (with a Starbucks chai, vegan cookie, and Brussels mug in hand) I still had a bit of time before we were meeting Amy and Dunja in the hotel lobby at 10:00. So after I showered, I decided to get on my personal Instagram and start making a few posts about the beginning of our trip.

UGH! Bad idea! Getting on there and dealing with glitchy technology (Instagram was posting the photos without the cropping and lighting edits I was making in the app) was making me angry – the first time I had felt that way in over a week! Steven noticed and asked if maybe I wanted to get off my phone. Good call. I did. Something to work on in therapy – why technology issues make me go from 0 to stabby immediately.

Right before we left to go to the lobby Steven asked me if I thought he should switch from his street shoes to running shoes. “Are we going to be walking a lot today?” Definitely, YES. I will share the step tally in another post, but that was my highest step count day at 33,386 steps. That included a run, so I am guessing Steven had at least 23-25K steps in. Needless to say, he was glad he put his more comfortable shoes on! (And I was like, yes, you brought them all the way here, you should use them!)

NEW FRIENDS

We met Amy and Dunja in the lobby – it was their first time meeting (they’d never been in any sort of contact before) and they were already chatting away. I wasn’t concerned about whether they’d hit it off or get along, but it did feel good to see them getting on so well!

Amy had some gifts for me, and I did for her, and we put them all in our hotel room to retrieve later, then went on our way.

WALKING THE BRUSSELS POLITICAL AREA

Gosh, let’s see if I can remember what any of this stuff is that we walked by. First, some lessons – I didn’t know Brussels is the de facto capital of the European Union, and that they hold the current EU presidency. So the area we were walking through is kind of similar to DC in the states. In my head anyway.

We left our hotel and walked by the Royal Palace, through Parc de Bruxelles, and by their Parliament,

by embassy buildings, commission buildings, etc. etc. The weather was absolutely bizarre this day in Brussels. In the midwest (and many parts of the world), people like to say “Don’t like the weather? Wait 5 minutes for it to change,” but I have NEVER experienced that as much as I did in Brussels. Bright sun and warm to rain and cold over and over and over all day long. It was… something to experience. Ha.

We walked through Parc du Cinquantenaire, saw the controversial Triumphal Arch,

and went into Autoworld to check out the gift shop and use the bathroom.

Then we were like, “Oh yeah, we have a reservation for lunch at 1:00, we should head that way.” So we did, but kept getting distracted.

We stopped to check out another political building (my memory escapes me as to what it was, edited to add – Amy let me know it was the European Parliament) and Dunja asked me if I would do a “Kim Hides the Rock” style rock hide with her for Instagram. I was like “Yeah, but I forgot, what is that?” She was like “whaaaaaa…..?????” Then reminded me that when I did my “hide a rock a day for the year” challenge last year I hid the rock then did a thumbs up after.

Y’all, I’m still so traumatized from doing that for a year that I completely forgot that’s what I did! But I was more than happy to do it with Dunja!

We continued on and got distracted by vegan chocolate when we saw a Lindt store. I told Amy about the amazing vegan Lindt chocolate (she is vegan too) from Germany and she had to go in and get some. And I did too. And have a quick bite!

At that point Amy had to call and tell our reservation we’d be a bit late. It was a vegan place so I told her to tell them we stopped for vegan chocolate and that they’d understand. Ha. They totally didn’t care and it wasn’t busy when we finally showed up.

THE JUDGY VEGAN

I was excited to try The Judgy Vegan because they had vegan versions of traditional Belgian dishes. But then I ended up getting a burger. Oops? I should have had the lasagna. Steven got a vegan version of a traditional Belgian dish though – Boulets sauce Liégeoise. And we all split the Croquettes de fromage végétal which were AMAZING and Steven and I got a slice of cake to have that evening.

The food was good, and the conversation was even better. Part of me wishes I could remember every conversation we had all together, as if I had a transcript, and part of me really likes random memories popping into my head. Like now, as I write this, I’m remembering we talked about spicy romance novels and how Amy wasn’t sure if her book club would like those. And that she read one I wrote about here that was a bit spicy and her mom is reading it too.

It’s just so nice to sit and enjoy good food and connect. We got to do this EVERY day in Europe, and I am so grateful for it.

WE GOTTA SEE MANNEKEN PIS

Amy had shared some ideas of things for us to see Friday when we weren’t together, and I told her we saw everything but Manneken Pis. Manneken Pis is a statue of a little boy peeing and he’s ALL over the city. I mean, there is just ONE of him, but he has been mass produced to be sold. I was surprised he was not on the Brussels Starbucks mug, to be honest.

So we made our way to see him.

On the way, we stopped to try another vegan waffle, from VeganWaf, which we’d found the night before, but it had been closed.

Sigh. I literally sighed as I am writing this. They make these waffles fresh in front of you, then add the toppings, and they are hot and incredibly delicious. I was in waffle heaven.

I brought this waffle rock to hide, and gave it to a nice lady in line who offered to take our photo. (As I am writing this, I am remembering walking through Grand Place and seeing several ladies wearing cat ears and me handing one of them a painted cat rock.)

These waffles were so good, I almost got a second one while we were still there. I didn’t though. Wink wink.

We kept walking and stopped to rub Everard ‘t Serclaes’s arm for good luck. I asked for good weather. Which we actually got, the next day, in Bruges!

When we walked by the Bourse there was a festival and concert happening. So we listened to cover of “Bohemian Rhapsody.” I was so happy in that moment, standing in the sun with my friends, listening to a Romanian band’s version of a song I love.

Then we saw him – Manneken Pis! He had an outfit on! Amy let us know some organizations sponsor an outfit for him (according to wikipedia, he has over 1,000 costumes!).

We never saw him unclothed. I’m not upset about that! Ha ha ha.

Then we went on to Jeanneke Pis, the female version… and things got a bit rowdy (in our group – we were being silly, doing some female peeing poses).

We talked about getting a Belgian beer but it was a long wait to get on to the roof garden and it was kind of getting late anyway (Amy stayed with us for much longer than she originally said she thought she would, yay!), so we went back to the hotel to get Amy’s stuff, then she took the train home.

It was wonderful to spend most of the day with Amy! We’d met in person once before in 2016 in Texas, and I had the best time then, and had been looking forward to seeing her so much. I really appreciate her being our tour guide (ha, and calling a restaurant in Bruges and speaking in Dutch for me to change our reservation from 2 to 3) and giving us so much of her time! Hopefully we don’t go 8 years between seeing each other again.

MORE WAFFLES! AND DINNER RIGHT AFTER!

Steven, Dunja, and I went back toward the city center, and did a video call with Dunja’s family. They’re so lovely and I can’t wait to meet them in person someday (soon)!

Then we went back to VeganWaf! I had to! The first time I got chocolate on my waffle, the second time I got caramel.

Ugh. So good.

Then we walked a bit and got dinner at Kistune Burgers, a random vegan place we had found when we were with Amy. Steven got a falafel burger and I got a Korean corn dog. I had seen people eating corn dog-esque things while walking and was really excited to try the vegan version. It was all delish!

It was another lovely meal with great conversation. I remember we shared some of the weird words and phrases we all use in our house and the reasoning behind them (for example, Steven and I say “cornbread costume” when someone leaves the lights on).

After dinner we headed back toward our hotel, and stopped at the grocery store next to it to buy some chocolate Amy recommended. Then we kind of called it early (around 9:00?) so we could all get some sleep before we met again in the morning to travel to Bruges! Steven and I went back to our room and split our cake then I wrote a few postcards and went to bed.