Brussels, Belgium

Palais Royal. Equivalent to Buckingham Palace. 

Brussels, Belgium

Notre Dame du Sablon. Past the cathedral and down the road is where the Pierre Marcolini chocolatier sits, one of the best chocolatiers in Belgium. 

Brussels, Belgium

I stuck around for some of their practice sessions, but didn't end up staying for the concert.

Brussels, Belgium

Back to the stage in the center of Grand Place. Here's what was going on. 

Brussels, Belgium

Imagine Madonna's "Hung Up" playing while these people dance. Umm...yeah. This was their finale. 

Brussels, Belgium

Definitely performance art.

Brussels, Belgium

Walking around I stumbled across this. At first it appeared to be some really poor cheerleaders but turned out to be some sort of performance art piece. 

Brussels, Belgium

The famous statue Manneken Pis. His costume is apparently changed on a regular basis. 

Brussels, Belgium

One last shot of Grand Place.

 

Brussels, Belgium

Making my way past all the restaurants found me at Grand Place, the main square of Brussels. It's a tough to get an idea from this picture of all the buildings enclosing this place. You can just see a stage area on the left of the shot. More on this later. 

Brussels, Belgium

Continuing down Galerie de la Reine, I found the beginning of Rue des Bouchers: an alleyway filled with a number of restaurants one after another after another. I came back here later and picked a restaurant at random and had some mussels and fries.

Brussels, Belgium

Just past Place Agora is this covered alley build specifically for pedistrian traffic called Galerie de la Reine (Queen's Gallery). There were a few chocolatiers down this way, but apparently the real places are somewhere else, close to Le Sablon.

Brussels, Belgium

I had time on Saturday to tour downtown Brussels. I arrived there about 1pm and started walking for a few hours. This is the first place that I went from the train station; Place Agora is a small market area where they sell lots of touristy things for more money than you really want to pay.

Holiday Inn in Brussels, Belgium

The bed wasn't exactly great quality, but I did get to watch a lot of weird Belgium TV. This and the office is what I saw for the first four days of my trip. More pics to come of Brussels when I had a chance to tour around.