Thanks to the jet lag I ended up going to bed at about 21:00 Friday night. That led to me getting up and being downstairs for breakfast by 8:00 which is early for me.
After breakfast I went to Grand Place to see it during the day. I planned to go to the Brussels museum, but since it didn't open until 10:00 (I was in the plaza by 9:30), I just wandered the streets around Grand Place. This is when I began to think that there was not a whole lot of old architecture in Brussels.
When I went to the museum my guess about the town was confirmed. It seems Brussels has always been willing to move forward by tearing stuff down. That and a large chunk of the city was decimated in something called the "bombardment of 1695". In the end this means that most buildings that seem old, with the exception at least of Grand Place, seem to be from the 19th century.
With a tendon that connects my hip to my femur aggravated, I came back to my room and relaxed. Spent most of it Redoing my budget spreadsheet in Apple Numbers from Google Spreadsheets. It allows me to have more information displayed on a single sheet. Plus the formatting options overall are just plain nicer.
Once I felt up for going out again I just wandered north, passing two architectural points of interest (the stock exchange and the oldest church in Brussels which does not look that old). Ended up in a part of Brussels that is not aimed at tourists. I then headed back down toward the hotel to give my leg another break.
After another rest I went to a nearby church designed by a famous Brussels architect. Along the way I saw the famous XXX; the fountain of a urinating boy. This town does have a love for that thing.
After being disappointed by the church I wandered south until I could see a major highway. Then I turned back and came back to the hotel once again to relax. I tried to take a half hour nap, but it stretched to 1.5 hours thanks to people making various ruckuses within earshot.
Having noticed many places closed on Friday night at around 21:00, I made sure I got up and went out for dinner. I walked around a bit to look for a place to it, but soon realized I had no clue what most places were serving since it was in either French or Dutch. I finally settled on a waffle house near the hotel.
I had a Belgian waffle, a sugar pancake, and hot chocolate. All of it was good and expensive. For the sugar pancake I had melted chocolate and french vanilla ice cream (at the suggestion of the waiter). It turned out to be really good! And the hot chocolate seemed to have actual belgian chocolate just melted into some milk.
Shortly after dinner my roommate for this trip finally showed up. Turned out he had been delayed by four hours in Ottawa which led to a ten hour delay in Heathrow's now-dreaded Terminal 5.
Sunday morning I got to go through daylight savings again. which cut short my already small amount of sleep I am getting (keep waking up early).
I hopped on the metro to get to VUB (the local Flemish university) for Spring School. Managed to miss my initial stop because I didn't realize you needed to press a button to open the doors of the train to get off. Luckily two stops down also works for getting to the university.
Basically they have a bunch of students get together to meet each other and discuss where they think the conference should go in the future. Afterwards we had beer and dinner. Unfortunately I was utterly exhausted at dinner and was actually dozing off. Needless to say when I got back to the hotel I promptly fell asleep.
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