If it's Tuesday this must be Belgium!

Today was a busy day in Belgium, our first of four in this city. We started with a very nice buffet breakfast in this new hotel. It is quite different from most that we have stayed in Europe since it is so modern and only one year old. It is decorated in what I refrer to as Ikea modern and much larger rooms than the older stately hotel we were in at Paris. So far Kari has booked us into some great hotels and locations at very reasonable rates. Sure nice to have a good travel agent doing the work for us! We are spoiled.
After breakfast, we walked around our hotel neighborhood and ended up at a large square with a huge flea/produce market. We weren't sure where we were located but luckily our hiking GPS is always with us and John marks our hotels as we begin our exploring each morning so we can find our way "home". We loved the architecture of the buildings with a wonderful mixture of old and new buildings from different eras.
This is the national holiday of independence for Belgium, July 21, so most of the stores were closed so our morning walk was very quiet.
We got back to the hotel in time for a quick lunch and then were off again for a special organized tour that Kari has booked for us. This is the 200th anniversary of Napolean's dismise at Waterloo, about 20 miles from modern Brussels. With this being their '4th of July' type holiday, the downtown was packed so our tour bus couldn't even get close to the tour office. Most of the streets were blocked either with people or police barricades so we had to meander through the crowds to where the bus was able to park.
The tour included a brand new ultra high tech museum and computerized audio-visual show that looks like it belongs in Disneyland. The bus tour was in English but the guide's English was very much in a monotone so it was sometimes hard to keep awake.  He definitely knows the history and told us everything possible about Napolean and Waterloo in the three locations that we visited during the four hours of walking and driving. We visited the exact farm location where over 10,000 troops from various countries lost their lives. It bothers me to see and hear of the murders which I always see as so so senseless. War, to me, is usually senseless and this was one battle that fits that to a 'T'.

French soldiers at Waterloo

The tour bus dropped everyone downtown at the main station but we told the tour guide that we had no idea of how to get back to our hotel as we are staying south of downtown so the bus driver was nice enough to take us back to the correct section of the city where we are staying. We got off at about 7pm and started to look for a place to eat dinner but with it being the holiday, most cafes were also closed. We finally found one after walking more on tired feet and sat down for a very multi-cultural street side dinner. John had pasta with bolonaise sauce and i had a Greek salad. John had not yet sampled any of the 450 different Belgium beers that they list in the travel guides so he tried two different varieties. The first was a famous one we had read about which is a fruit flavored beer. It was red and tasted like a mixture of cherry soda and beer andis called Krieg. Not his favorite. The other was a pilsner and he liked it much better. The meal was nice and we were glad to find a place to enjoy people watching while eating.We also enjoyed listening to all of the Dutch being spoken even though we understood none of it. The owner of the cafe didn't speak English but we were able to communicate using our little bit of French that we had picked up in Paris as many people here also speak French and we tried a few phrases in german so he must of thought we were germans.

We walked back to the hotel at about 9pm and we were tired. We checked our pedometer and found that we had walked 8 1/2 miles so our feet and backs were ready to relax. We went to sleep but I awoke at midnight to see if I could see the fireworks that our tour guide said would be starting at that time. I couldn't see them from our location, south of the city, but was surprised to see the streets and tram were packed with familes at this late time of the night. I awoke again at 3 am and looked out the window and was surprised to still see the streets were busy with families. 
"Tuesday, it must be Belgium!" A rather non-descript old movie but a perfect name for the day!
(by the way, if there are spelling mistakes, our old tablet has a bad habit of self correcting our spelling the way it thinks it should be spelled.

Also, if you care to make comments or have questions on our travels, feel free to post them here in the comment section of our blog and we will try to answer them.
Just keep in mind that we are 9 hrs ahead so we may not answer right away...lol

John enjoys a classic Belgian brew.