Brussels

We decided to spend out Easter break up in Belgium and the Netherlands this year. Our first stop was Brussels. As are planned stay in Brussels was short (1 night) I booked a hostel outside of the city center. When we emerged from the metro to the neighborhood of our hostel were not sure if we were still in Europe or had suddenly been transported back to North Africa (or Marseille, maybe) complete with sex-segregated hammams and everything! We could purchase any souvenirs that we had regretted not getting in Morocco. I had wanted to visit the Grand Place that evening, but Daniel suggested that rather than setting back out for Europe proper, we embrace the Arab quarter in which we had found ourselves. We enjoyed a great Egyptian dinner that night and visited the market in the morning.

Jonas was our strongman hauling Eva's baby bed around. There is no doubt that she is the spoiled one; we never would have imagined carrying a baby bed around for the boys. Jonas always shared a bed when we traveled with him (granted, that is what he preferred) as a baby, and for Jaxon we would just jimmy rig some sort of bed on the floor using our backpacks since he refused to sleep anywhere near us. 

After ditching our bags at the train station we headed over to visit the Atomium, one of the less noteworthy remaining World's Fair structures. Thought it was really out of the way, Jaxon had been so excited to see it that I couldn't stand the thought of letting him down. He had recently seen it on a chocolate cookie and seemed very attracted by the sciency-looking-ness of it. 

Going up the super fast elevator.

Baby girl getting in on the letter climbing fun.

After the Atomium adventure we headed to the Grande Place in the city center to living the part of the Brussels experience that I was most excited for: eating mussels in Brussels. Jonas kept on thinking that we were going to eat muscles in Brussels...

We ordered a big pot of mussels and carbonade, another local specialty.

Jonas was a little weary of the mussels, though he was a sport and ate a few.

It was Jaxon who really killed them. We had to try to eat them before he ate them all!

Next we headed to go see the Mannekin-pis: the statue of the little boy peeing. It was a little hard to get through to him with the crazy crowd, but we managed. Daniel and I still aren't quite sure what the big deal is, but the boys appreciated it.

In the Grande Place we took some time to visit all the Chocolate shops...and to buy some.

After that we headed out on the train to Bruges and checked into our new hotel, Hotel 't Keizerhof, a quaint home-like structure. Evaelle was ready to get out and explore her new surroundings. Though it is fun to have her crawling around all over the place and pulling herself up on things, it does make it a little more difficult for traveling. I really thought that we would have a little more time before she was getting into everything, six months is a little young... But we can't thwart her ambitiousness.

We headed out on the Bruges town that evening. We enjoyed some delicious waffles and then took a wrong turn and got lost just as the snow started to fall... The kids were great sports, though.