Brussels : Comic Museum!

Brussels : Comic Museum!

Tuesday (the 18th April), Steve and I awoke at our usual time of 8am and Steve dragged me downstairs for the breakfast the hotel had kindly included into our overnight cost. It was a nice breakfast actually, Cereal, French bread, a selection of ham, cheese, and boiled egg..and a number of sweet toppings as well as tea and coffee. I was feeling a little bit better that morning and happily brewed myself a cup of tea..and Steve a coffee...

If anything I personally was just frustrated with the events of the past couple of days. Steve, most probably felt a little bit powerless to help. I had my imodium, acidophilus and it just had to run its course. The side effect from the whole ordeal was that I was still feeling dehydrated and a little run down from not eating for two days. ... but I sensibly had continued to drink water from the minute the whole thing started as well as dosing myself with Gastrolyte to replace the electrolytes I had lost.... And my appetite was slowly beginning to return...

I slowly munched my way through some cereal and a little bit of French Bread with honey.... if I could have I would have chosen toast... my favourite type of food when feeling sick...and of course with honey! My other long time sickness favourite is porridge..... but beggars can't be choosers.. so I picked the best food so it was as easily digestable as possible and finished it off with a second cup of Green Tea...

Nevertheless, after breakfast Steve and I headed towards an internet cafe to chase up some administrative tasks before we launched ourselves into exploration of the city. At the first internet cafe we considered visiting, we witness a customer practically having a brawl with the internet cafe owner... actually it was a woman. She was so fiercly aggressive that Steve and I slowly and nconspicously backed out of the cafe and down the stairs incase this woman did a runner....

A little further down the street, Steve and I found another internet cafe which looked a little nicer and slapped down a couple fo Euro's..and sat down to catch up on email etc an some printing.. The FUN thing about interneting in Cafe's around the world is that the arrangement of the letters on the keyboard vary slightly from country to country.. In Brussels, what did my head in.. (because I was trying to log into facebook) was finding the @ symbol. When I did actually find it... I felt like I was trapped in a some sort of mental puzzle because every combination of keys just didn't seem to do it..

Thoroughly embarrassed, I found myself having to ask the gent sitting further down from me how to get the wretched thing up.... who know what the key combination was now.. I can't remember... but what an ordeal ! So after conquering the strange keyboard at the internet cafe, Steve and I grabbed our lunch from the local supermarket and set off to explore some of more of the city of Brussels. I remember the day before we had followed the signs to "Mannekin Pis" and still somehow had managed to walk in circles and completely omit it! Thats the great fun about coming to a new city - Steve and I just LOVE to walk around in circles.. either that or Steve seems to lead me around in confusion... and I - I obediently follow... I am sure that one day soon I will just stop dead in my tracks like a stubborn mule and just blatantly refuse to go any further.. ;o)

So, after much deliberation Steve and I decided to head to the Comic Museum. Brussels also has a Chocolate Museum, but we had visited one in Brugge.. so we figured that the Comic Strip Museum sounded a little more interesting.. and we read somewhere that they had original comic strips of the Smurfs! Still, after we got there and walked around a little bit we realised that we recognised none of the Comic Strips! Well they had some of Tintin and a little of Asterix & Obelix... Most of the comics were either in French or Dutch.. either way it was interesting to look at these comic strips more for the artistry and creativity involved ...

After we left the Comic Museum, Steve and I wandered around to find a park because I was mainly feeling tired from being in my feet in the museum. We found ourselves at Park Van Brussel and relaxed there for a little while. The park had a cafe as well.. so we stopped for a beer and an ice tea... and then moved on to explore more of Brussels. Along the way we discovered the Royal Palace. The Royal Family doesn't actually live there, but it where the King conducts the business of the Head of State. The palace also serves as the Grand Marshal of the Court, the King's Head of Cabinet and other affairs. It really is a spectacular building with interesting architecture.

From there, Steve wanted to check out where the European Union office was and we somewhat wandered around in circles again trying to find it. In our search we came across Leopold Park and yet again sat down to have a little rest. Prior to entering the park there were some sort of festivities going on in the street nearby but as we sat down to rest, we heard several cars honking madly and then witness a young hoodlum running through the park with some poor ladies handbag.. but close by in tow was a big dog and then a middle aged gent followed running like the wind trying to catch the offender! The hoodlum had caused so much attention to himself that he dropped the bag midway through the park...and so the handbag was returned...

Some time later the guy who had been chasing the hoodlum limped back through the park... with his dog. I had to give him a round of applause for being chivalrous and running like he had never run before to retrieve the bag. I don't know whether he already had the limp or whether he had acquired it during the pursuit... either way... Its nice to know that there are men out there who will rescue a damsel in distress even if it was for a silly handbag!

Steve and I left the park after that incident with me clutching my bag tighter than usual and resumed our search for the European Union Office... with me dragging my feet behind! We did come across it eventually and to me.. it was just like any big tall office building except it had "European Union" written on it in every language of every country that was part of the current European Union. Satisfied at that point.. I dragged Steve back towards our hotel room and try and find something to eat and then return to our room for a good night's rest!

Our impressions of Brussels : http://picasaweb.google.com/hillsj/Brussels

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