There are a lot of places in Brussels to eat and drink. Many of the bars are open much later than in the U.S. and, naturally, offer far better quality beer. Jennifer, who had been to Brussels several times before, knew several good places to go. Among them was the Lop Lop bar. We went there 3 nights in a row actually. The first night was quite fun. They occasionally have live music and on that night there was a blues band playing. The guitar player / singer was from Ft. Worth, TX and the bass player and drummer were from Moscow. It turns out the drummer was in one of the top selling Russian bands of all time. After talking with him for a while I wound up with an invitation to sit in, which I couldn’t pass up. Before the night was over, I played a couple of tunes with the band and, to remember the occasion, we bought a CD and had the band autograph it. Of course, I didn’t have my camera with me for that particular occasion so we had to come back and take the picture later.
Al (the Captain) and Jen had previously scoped out a great little Italian restaurant away from most of the touristy areas. It’s called La Brace and is a couple stops on the subway away from the hotel. Among other things, they had this great salad with tomatoes, greens, mozzarella, olive oil and basil. The Lotus Elise in the picture was parked on the street around the corner. Don’t see many of those in the U.S. ;-)
The streets in Brussels all have two names, one in Flemish and one in
French. That makes navigating confusing. And, of course, none
of the streets go straight and each time they turn, they change names.
Most of the people speak at least a little bit of English and we found
them to be fairly friendly, though not overly outgoing. The food
was fantastic and the atmosphere was 100% European. I can’t wait
to go back…
