Brussels, Belgium

One full day in Brussels is too long!  We arrived at 9 am to a very cold Brussels, the economic capital of Europe.  We took a tour bus around the whole city and saw some interesting things, but we did not stop anywhere.  One interesting thing we saw was a huge molecule which was built for the 1958 World's Fair by an architect who imagined we would all live in structures like it, but we didn't stop and explore the building.  After the tour bus, we had lunch at a very cute café, the dessert was good.  After lunch, we were free to explore the city by ourselves... for four hours.  We saw the mannequin pis (excuse my language) :) which is a little statue that commemorates an old story where a cannon was pointed at the city, set to destroy it, when a little child came across it and extinguished it by peeing on it.  The statue is tiny and the little boy is naked and on special occasions they dress him up.  Brussels is best known for its: beer, waffles, lace, and chocolate.  I bought some great chocolate there and later suffered dearly for it when I finally crashed.  Christy and I also shared a delicious waffle with chocolate and strawberries.  Yummers!  We all meet up on time with an hour to catch our train, but somehow we still missed it.  There we were 30 or so people running from the metro to the train station arriving three minutes late for the train (France prides itself on the punctuality of their trains.)  Luckily, there was another train a half hour later, but nothing will take away from the memory of people at the station laughing at us as we all tried desperately to catch the train.  We finally reached home sweet Paris at 9:30 where Christy and I enjoyed a nice quiet dinner at home.