Beers and Buildings in Brussels

G'day punters. I've just returned from a 3 day trip to Brussels (the Capital of Belgium) am still a little hungover. Awesome place...lots of good beers lots of good food. A lot less busy than London. They speak french so I had to learn a little in order to buy food and order beer. (oui oui!). The 3 highlights were as follows:

The Buildings.


Amazing..... I guess until one visits a country that has been around for more than 2 hundred years, they don't realise how interesting buildings that are centuries old are. The main square was surrounded by eight to ten story building which were all at least 5 or 6 hundred years old.

The Beers.


The beers were all about 6.5% or more and had a funny sort of caramel taste. I did have a few which were about 9%... but only a few. The photo is of me at a Pub at which you could order a selection of 5 different beers ranging from a light, to a Rasberry beer, to a very strong dark beer. My favourite was called an Orval which was like a Coopers Pale Ale beer a little more bitter and stronger.

The Bands.

Fortunately Brussels hosted a Jazz Festival on the weekend that we were in town. It was actually more Jazz, Blues and Funk than just Jazz. Across the city there was about 4 stages like this one which were free to go to. After speaking to an Aussie we met who lived in Brussels we discovered that this kind thing happens on most weekends.

I also visited a world renown musical instrument museum which was in a 6 storey old building with a whole floor of instruments to play and learn. The other floors were full of just about every instrument in the world. Each visitor would have a pair of wireless headphones which would play the sounds of each particular instrument as you walked past the display.

My next trip is to Paris to see Genesis at the end of June so watch this space.