Today was definitely off sorts for me. My cell phone ran out of power and the alarm didn't go off so I woke up late. I mean really late for me. It was 9:45 when I woke up. I haven't woken up that late without being dog sick in years. Generally I am up by no later than 7am local time. This really threw me off schedule. I had hoped to be out the door early so that I could see some of what Belgium had to offer in a quick run before Patrick was to pick me up and bring me to the office. With the whole morning already gone by the time I was done showering and having a quick cup of instant coffee I really wasn't getting much chance to do that. I did manage to walk back to the center of town and poke around for just a few minutes though.
I ate lunch at a McDonald's mostly out of the speed and they wouldn't serve beer factors. I tried to order a Royal Crispy Bacon Cheeseburger but they were instead having a NYC promotion where I got a NYC Crispy Cheeseburger which seemed minus the bacon and plus some fried onion ring bits. It was ok but nothing stellar as fast food burgers go. It did taste better than the burger I had in Rome. I swapped out the soda with a coffee to make sure I had the proper levels of caffeine since I woke up so late.
After eating lunch I did wander the region for a few minutes more and found the Manekin Pis. This is a statue of a pissing boy that the locals dress up in different ways depending on the season or mood. Today he was dressed up as St. Nick. The classic European variety that is. After finding him I opted to circle back into the known regions and head back to the hotel. On the way I stopped at a market and bought some groceries for the next few days. The market is just around the corner from the hotel and had more than the place I shopped the night before. It is still nothing like a good old fashioned US supermarket but at least I was able to get some essentials.
After packing up my food I hung out on the computer for a short time before Patrick showed up and he drove me to the office where I was able to see the layout and he showed me how to walk there from the train station. I intend to try the train first and if that isn't working out so well I will switch to cab. I am sure it is a ton cheaper to take the train. The office is very nice and impressively clean and new looking. My classroom there seems nicer than the one I have at home. I got the full tour of the office and could see my equipment was working when last it was used which is nice. I rather need to have it working for the class to be successful. In any event after the brief tour we headed back and Patrick dropped me off at the hotel.
It was about 3:15 by then so I opted to walk back town and see some of the sights before having dinner then heading back to the room. I wandered around a lot and mainly ended up recapping what I had already seen. I tried to get myself lost a couple times but it appears to be difficult to do in the Gros Markt region. I didn't take a lot of pictures today due to a constant rain that really limited me wanting to use the camera. Nonetheless I walked around for a while to kill time until it was reasonably late to have dinner. Around 5pm I decided on a Restaurant called L'Alzequin which is right in the restaurant row near the Gros Markt. If you've been there it makes sense. There seems to be a two street region that is nothing but restaurants. I had a set menu which included a vegetable soup and mussels with fries (which is a typical Belgian treat). The soup was very good and the Portuguese man sitting next to me decided to change his starter to the soup from whatever he had ordered based on the smell. The waiter gave him a small argument but he got the soup in the end. The mussels were also very good. They were fresh in a broth with some vegetables. My only complaint would be that a few of them were a bit gritty. Not horribly so, but they probably could have soaked a bit before cooking. That said they were perfectly cooked and very tasty. I liked the mussels we had in Denmark with Jesper just a touch more. The dinner was finished with a small waffle with chocolate sauce and I accompanied with a Leffe Brune as well. I was trying to order a blonde but got a brune. No problem for me but I wanted to try the blonde. At dinner I met a Malaysian woman and the Portuguese man and we each talked for a little bit. They were nice and the dinner was pleasant.
After dinner I made the quick walk back to the hotel to relax for the rest of the evening.
The pictures for day 2 can be found here.
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