Brussels

To celebrate our one year anniversary, Ro and I took an impromptu trip to the romantic city of Brussels. Ok, not so romantic but it is at the end of the Eurostar and is very nice.

Ro and I have very similar tastes, which means we love kitsch, antiques and garish things. We chose to stay in Mozart Hotel, as it had everything we wanted: gold, tiles, antiques, old paintings, etc. It was just up our street.

We met the owner of the hotel, Ben, who was also lovely and had opened up his hotel restaurant as a soup kitchen for those down on his luck. This guy truly has a good heart and was just so generous and thoughtful.

Of course, while in Brussels, you do what all the tourists do and drink to you can't drink no more. Hence La Corne becoming one of our favourite new tipples. The best thing is that you can't put the glasses down without a stand, which means you are unable to get truly shit faced...well, you can, as we did in fact.

On Sunday morning, we bought a beautiful ring for me to wear for the rest of my life. Ro and I are now engaged, the poor boy is mad. However, my ring is bloody beautiful and makes me as happy as he does.

We saw the 'Mannekin Pis', my father had told me that he was a little chap who you could miss if you didn't look hard enough, he was not wrong. He is tiny and they dress him up for some random reason, this would be like us dressing up Nelson on public holidays, I'm not opposed to this suggestion, I just would like to opt out of being his dresser.

It is also very strange seeing little boys peeing everywhere!

We also found the only goth bar in Brussels, it is just off the main square and was a lot of fun: black lights, corpses in coffins, dark leather everywhere, skulls for glasses...metal on full blast, everything you could want from your local goth bar!

How is it that Europe does squares/piazza so well? Brussels is no exception and has some stunning architecture, from vaulted ceilings to beautiful ornate stone work. We had a long discussion about the fact that Brussels missed a lot of the bombing in WWII, due to it changing hands so many times, the only real damage it appears to have incurred is from mortars and they appear to have fixed them up good and proper.

Not only do I have a ring to remind me of our time in Brussels but we also have some remarkable cushion covers to rest our weary bones on in the evening and a load of random crap from a flea market we thoroughly enjoyed!