Day 67 - Better Than Chocolate

Belgium is famous for its chocolates and waffles, but we have yet to eat any. We have been too busy wandering from monument to monument oggling the architecture. Brussels has been an active town since the early Middle Ages. The architecture is a whipped cream confection of Baroque, Gothic, Neo-Classical, and modern, all smooshed together on a tiny plot of land. Naturally the mascot of such a city should be the Manneken Pis, or peeing boy. A tiny statue that in its former life (circa 1619) provided public drinking water, and today is the irreverant symbol of a rather irreverant town. We also puttered around the market square, inside and out of various churches, and up and down the labrytine streets of the old quarter. The city is well way-marked for tourists, with signposts on nearly every corner. We relied on this some, but the towering white steeple of the Broojd Huis (Bread House) on Market Square was an easy landmark to navigate by.

In the evening we internetted again - only 10 days behind now! - until 9PM. We stopped because we had noticed earlier in the day a stage being set up in the Market Square. It was for the Brussels Summer Festival - every few days a different concert. We had stumbled into the city in time to hear the National Chamber Orchestra of Belgium perform a free open-air concert in front of the gothic State House Museum. We stood on the plaza sipping Belgian fruit beer and letting the music and crowd swirl around us. The building facades all around the square were lit up against the night sky, and it was easy to feel happy and far away from our ordinary reality.