In a weekend that saw the worst storm in 10 years through western Europe, we thought a holiday in Brussels would be a good idea! To be fair, Em came up with this idea a couple of weeks ago and the weather wasn't that bad, and it didn't really detract from the place. What a beautiful old town! Can't say much for the rest of Brussels, but the area we were in was just fantastic. Centered around the 'Grand Place' with tonnes of history to go with Belgium's new position in the centre of the European Union, Brussels was the perfect place for a weekend away.

We arrived on Friday night after arriving at the Gard du Nord in Paris to be told our train was cancelled due to the accident a couple of weeks ago. We had 2 options, to either wait for the next train at 5pm, or travel via Lille (France) and Gent(Belgium). Either would have us there only 2 hours later than normal, so wasn't really a big deal. We decided on the long way round and had a nice trip through the farms of northern France and Belgium. It's pretty wet and miserable at this time of year!

We arrived in Brussels to rain, something that was to keep us company for the entire weekend. We quickly found our hotel and ventured out for a look around. Cobbled streets and little cute buildings was the first impression, followed by the long forgotten overwhelmingness that is a smoker's pub (thanks to the lawmakers for changing the rules in NZ, France and other places!!). Luckily not all places are like this, especially restaurants. We made a search for Moulle Frites, a local delicacy of mussels and fries and found plenty of places that served this, all around the princley sum of 20euros. Considering we get the same in Paris for 15euros I was a bit miffed, I mean the stuff comes from Belgium! But we swallowed our pride and got stuck in, washing it all down with some lovely beer.

The next day we headed out to visit a few museums, and made our way through the Beer Museum, the Chocolate Museum plus the Brussels Musuem so thought we were definitly in need of refreshments. The owners of the Delerium Cafe, makers of the Delerium Tremense (voted best beer in the world a couple of years ago) kindly helped out. And a nice drop it is to!

Well satied and very tired (11% beer...phew!)we retired, looking forward to another couple of museums on Sunday. Unfortunatly this was when Brussels coped the worst of the weather, and we managed to get wet and cold getting to the first on our list, the Instrument Museum (first time I had used the headphones on loan and it was well worth it). We had also found out that the train back had been cancelled also, so we had to catch a different one. Deciding discretion was the better part of valour we snuggled up into a warm pub and had tomatoe soup before heading to the train station to catch the earlier rather than the later. As the seats were first come, first served due to the cancellations this was a good idea. In our cabin there would have been 10 people sitting on the ground.

So all in all a great weekend. Was nice to get away for a few days and see something a little different. I didn't really have an opinion on the Belgish(?) before we came here and still don't really. They seem nice, a little restrained and plain after the French, but very helpful. Will have to come back for a better visit one day, it's only 90 min from Paris after all. Takes almost as long to get to Dourdan!