I’m at 33,000 ft. on the way to Venice. I’ve been meaning
to start this diary for quite some time. Now that I’ve taken a couple
of international trips, it’s imperative that I get it going before I forget
the details of the first couple of trips. I’ll start with my first
IOE trip to Brussels, then catch up Belfast, then I'll be caught up.
The Brussels trip was in late May. There were two round trips scheduled. The first had a short layover so we didn’t do a whole lot. The second was nearly 3 days of layover time. Most of the pictures are from that trip, most of which occurred on the 27th through the 29th of May.
I was in Brussels in High School so this wasn’t my first trip. I remember liking the waffles. Boy did I have that right! This time we stayed at the Hotel Meridian near Grand Place. It is a very nice hotel (one of the nicest I’ve stayed in) and World Crewmembers get their full hot breakfast for free. The breakfast in the hotel there is the best breakfast I’ve had in my 27 years of life.
Anyway, Grand Place (pronounced “Gran Plas”, or thereabouts) is a huge square in the center of downtown Brussels. The streets in town are mostly cobblestone as is the entire area in Grand Place. It is lined with beautiful buildings and the whole area in and around is a shopping, eating, tourist mecca. A few blocks from Grand Place is a small statue. It would be easy to miss if it weren’t for the crowds around taking pictures. It’s called Mannequin Pis (pronounced “pee”). It is, quite literally, a fountain of a little boy peeing (yes it really runs). They dress him up in different clothing from time to time. Of course, this being a rather famous statue, you can buy his likeness in just about every store in Belgium. When I was there in High School I bought the bronze corkscrew version. The corkscrew was, well, you know…
Then there are the arches. This is a bit of a hike from our hotel.
We took the subway actually which cut down on the walking time considerably.
This giant monument was erected in the early 1900’s if I recall correctly.
This was one of the places I distinctly remember visiting in high school.
We got out of the bus, took pictures, got back in the bus. This time
we had a bit more time. On one side is a war and aviation museum.
On the other side is an automobile museum. The war museum was closed
the day we were there but we went into the auto museum. Though it
doesn’t quite match the Henry Ford museum, it was worth seeing. They
did have a section with some rather old European coaches.
