Today marks one week of traveling now and Brussels is definitely an amazing place. If you like texture in your architecture, you are sure to be amazed. The city has offered up the best of everything so far, as you can plainly see from the previous posts. Some things I haven't mentioned yet include beer, chocolate and the general atmosphere of the city and its environs...so here we go...
Brussels seems very crunchy to me. I can only elaborate on that to the effect that the architecture is very ornate and the streets are heavily laden with cobblestones, so the effect is one of enormous and varied textures colliding with each other to produce this "crunchy" feeling as you move through the neighborhoods and streets. The closest comparisons I can draw European city wise are Prague in the Czech Republic and Krakow in Poland. All three are these architecturally rich cities with intricate histories that whisper to you every step of the way. You definitely feel as though you've stepped into the past in some sections and in others you're astounded by how things just mesh and work out...much better than they seem to in The States for the most part. I couldn't even draw a comparison to a U.S. city from the three I mentioned...I suppose the closest would be Washington D.C. or New Orleans...and that's still quite the stretch of the imagination.
As for the beer...if you're a beer drinker, you should already know that the Belgians have got it down to a science. There are sooooo many different styles, flavors and of course alcohol contents that often it's impossible to make a choice and you just end up drinking several kind in one night. There are so many in fact that I'm not even going to attempt to go into any kind of detail. I'll just direct you to the website of the Delerium Cafe, which has over 2,000 beer selections on its menu...and no, that's not a typo, there are really TWO THOUSAND beers on the menu. See it HERE. By the way, the place is huge too and just across the alley way, there is an absinthe bar that falls under the same corporate roof?
NOW, on to the chocolate. You can't even imagine how good the chocolate is here...seriously. People always describe insanely good chocolate as melting in your mouth. If that's the case with the best chocolate I've had prior to experiencing Brussels, then the only apt description is that it melts into your soul. It is seriously THAT good! And just when you thought a praline was a praline...actually, a praline in The States is something completely different, which involved sugar coated pecans. A Belgian praline is chocolate wrapped around something...anything, as long as it's a soft fondue center. Imagine those packages of candies that your parents used to get when you were a kid during the holidays. You picked a square, pulled out a piece of chocolate and prayed for caramel, only here, caramel is a waste of time when there are so many other varieties. You're just going to have to trust me on this one. My personal favorite is the raspberry flavored one I found somewhere and hazelnut comes in a close second...and I used to not even care for hazelnut. That's how good they do it here. Like anything else in life, you'll have to experience it for yourself.
Now that I've written my appetite up into a longing for beer and chocolate (not at the same instance), it's time to end this post and move along before I really do some damage to my psyche by discussing things currently out of my reach.
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