In Belgium
 Denise on the Grand Place |
 The Mannekin Pis |
 The Royal Palace |
 Parc Du Cinquantenaire |
 Milk Protest |
This morning I’m sitting in our room at the hotel in Brussels, just of the Grand Place and getting ready to start packing to leave and take the high speed train to Paris for the next 6 days. Denise and I have had an amazing time in Belgium so far. The people here are so nice and eager to help and the quality of the food here is simply “off the hook”. We’ve enjoyed the beer, chocolate, waffles and cheese among many other things. I’m not sure I’ve tasted better chocolate anywhere. Fortunately we’ve had good weather the entire time we’ve been here so far, so going outside and walking around this beautiful city has been very enjoyable. Denise and have always loved going into really old churches and there are so many very old churches here. We’ve gone into nearly all the ones we’ve come across and they’ve all been spectacular on a grand scale. The Cathedral of St. Michael is probably the biggest in Brussels, but the Notre Dame du Sablon is also another beautiful church we visited. We also walked up to the Avenue Louise, which is a very fancy shopping district near the Royal Palace with stores such as you might typically see on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.
The meetings I attended on Wed-Fri went very well and I was able to network with a great number of other IT-types from the Springer family of companies. And at night we were treated to some great food at a few local restaurants. This city is very friendly to the person who likes to walk around, especially the area near the Grand Place. Everywhere you look, there’s some new amazing thing to see. All the streets are made of cobblestone and musicians are everywhere playing guitars, accordions, saxophones and other instruments. Yesterday we took a taxi to the Parc du Cinquantiare. A simply breathtaking park crowned with a very large Arc de Triomphe of it’s own. There seemed to be a demonstration or protest by dairy farmers about milk prices going on in the park, but it was all very peaceful.
Today we leave Brussels and head for Paris, and we’re both excited about what we’ll see there. We got some great travel advice from one of the other IT attendees about what to look for and to look out for while in Paris too.
