Although we loved spending time in London and Paris, we were very ready to be out of the major tourist cities and on our way to Brussels. We arrived at our AirBnB, quickly dropped our stuff off, and ventured into the city to search for food.

(This is the street our AirBnB was on!)

We were happy to discover that it is easy to find food that costs less than your first born child outside of London and Paris (woohoo!) We quickly decided on a spaghetti place in a church square with nice outdoor seating. The restaurant was called Bavet, but the awnings also said “spaghetti for friends” – too cute! The restaurant even used bibs instead of punchcards, requiring you to get a stain from each of their nine locations in exchange for a free meal (it has got to be nasty by the end!)

After eating lots of spaghetti we explored Brussels, soon realizing how walkable the city is! We saw beautiful buildings, monuments, and parks and still had time to take a quick rest at our AirBnB before dinner.

For dinner we decided on a place called BAOGO which serves burgers with a steamed bao bun instead of a traditional bun. It was really good and interesting, and our dinner was accompanied by some surprise street performers playing music.

After our dinner and a show, we headed to the famous Delirium Cafe to enjoy some of their hundreds of beers on offer. Becca got one of the strangest beers we have ever seen, as it was lime green in color!

Having finished our beers, we made our way home, stumbling into a drumline performing for the Brazil World Cup Game. It drew a big crowd, and we knew where to come to watch the Belgium – England game the next day!

Yesterday when we woke up we knew we wanted to get authentic Belgian waffles, so we headed to Maison Dandoy for breakfast. While the whole breakfast took over an hour (there was only one server for the whole tea room), the waffles and tea were exactly what we were looking for, so yummy!

We’ve kind of decided that anything within a 4 mile radius of where we are is “walkable”, so we decided to walk to Atomium and Mini Europe from our AirBnB (only 3.5 miles 🙂 ). While it was warm out and tiring, it was fun to explore more of the city by foot. Both Atomium and Mini Europe were so cool and well worth the walk. Atomium was built for the World’s Fair and is very futuristic looking, and Mini Europe showcases the EU through models of cities and monuments that are important to Europe. It was fun to see cities that we’d been to already as well as ones that are coming up in our trip! (And we got to see Big Ben without the scaffolding that is covering it in London currently!)

Getting home, we decided to check out a nearby brewery – Brussels Beer Project – where we got to try some interesting beers. They try to create 4-5 new beers every week! We got a sampling of their flagship beers which included one made out of recycled bread. After drinking some beers and catching the end of the Colombia – Senegal game, we headed back into town.

We capped our stay in Brussels off by crowding into a popular bar to watch the Belgium – England game. We found great seats to watch the game, only realizing after that they might have required a paid reservation (oops). Nevertheless, it was really fun to watch the game surrounded by passionate fans supporting both sides. After Belgium won 1-0 (thanks to a beautiful goal), there was an imprompteu celebration in the streets right outside our bar (started by the same drumline, obviously!)

Now we are in Amsterdam, staying in a personal camper van at a hostel, excited for what this new city holds for us!

A funny moment from the game that we had to share (a quite unique goal celebration):