Brussels: Day 3

For our final time in Brussels we walked over to the Palais du Roi which is the formal royal residence, not sure if they use it for anything now but it's a beautiful building. 

There is a nice park in front of the palace called Warandepark and we strolled through there and then stopped for a mid-morning waffle snack. You can't go to Belgium and NOT try a Belgian waffle right? The waffles were delicious! A lot lighter, airier, and eggier then the 'belgian waffles' we have in the states. Dale embarrassed me and asked for syrup to pour on his waffle, the waiter gave us a dirty look for that one and Dale got a stern 'no' but he ended up liking it a lot with just the powdered sugar on it.

One thing I wanted to be sure to tell you all about in Belgium is the languages. Everyone we met spoke English just fine so we didn't have any problems. But the official languages are Dutch (locally referred to as 'flemmish'), French and German. Here's an example of a street sign in Brussels:

 

Sometimes as we were walking around we'd have to look for another street sign just to find the streets as they were labeled on our map which was mostly in German. Pretty interesting! Dale and I kept thinking about how almost all of the American's we know can only speak English and how here you'd have to know like 4 languages to work in any service job. Crazy!

After our nice waffle stop we walked to the Palace of Justice which apparently one of the largest buildings built anywhere in the 19th century. It's currently being restored so we couldn't go in but it did look pretty dang massive!

And the view from the Palace was pretty great too. It was purposefully built at the top of the hill overlooking the poorer community as an example of the power the rich had. 

Dale really isn't a dessert person but I guess he likes me because next I got him to do a chocolate making workshop with me! Before we embarked on our trip I googled the best chocolate shops to be sure I knew which chocolate to try in Belgium and instead of finding lots of chocolate I wanted to try I found a free chocolate making workshop I wanted to attend at Zaabar in Brussels. We got to make truffles and some chocolate thing where you flatten out some warm chocolate and put whatever you want on it. Pretty basic chocolate making but it was free and we got to keep what we made! Score!

After we finished making our chocolate we walked back to the hostel, checked out, and said goodbye to Brussels. I was surprised how much we both loved Brussels. We had a really great time getting to know the city and enjoyed taking our time and finding historical buildings or delicious beer! I hope we can return soon!
Love Always,
Matilda