Day 28 - A second Day of Rest...or Sort Of

Today we decided to venture into the city to see the Margritte Museum. Margritte was a Belgian surrealist and this museum boasted the largest collection of his work. Also it was brand new, only two months old, and we were informed by the Canadian traveler that we met on our first day in Brussels that it was pretty exceptional. We contemplated how we would get to the city while watching the morning drizzle and while still feeling pretty tired and after being warned by our hosts about the distance to the city center and with the long confusing ride out to our hosts place still fresh on our minds. We soon decided to checkout the city’s train system that day. We required a lot of help from a girl who spoke a little English but was able to explain to the ticket counter in French that we wanted two round-trip tickets. In all actuality we could have figured out the system ourselves but were just lacking the confidence to do so. The trains are uncannily similar to the trains in any American city. Our only regret is that after buying our tickets, we found out that the whole network runs on the honor system and we easily could have walked onto the train just as easy with or without a ticket. After our legitimate ride on the train, we had some time so we walked around the city, through a nice park which was having a concert and where a carnival had just ended, and we saw the Royal Palace. The Margritte museum was very interesting and fun. There was a lot of work with supplemental quotes by the artist and guides that were showing people around who we joined briefly but who only seemed to by intentionally creating mystery about Margritte and his work. It was very interesting to piece together a personality, whether accurate or not, for Margritte through his quotes, his work, and some videos that were displayed. After Margritte we went in search of some other land marks that were marked on a map that we obtained from the hostel where our Canadian acquaintance was staying that had a bunch of both touristy and locally acclaimed landmarks. Our first stop was a postcard shop that had a lot of very old and very interesting postcards. The selection turned out to be a little too big, and because there was so much, no purchases were made. We then went on a hunt for Bulgian fries since we were hungry. We bought a few beers and found a fry shop - also on the map. They were pretty good; definitely different from the fries in America. We didn’t know it yet, but we later discovered that French fries was a misnomer and much to the annoyance of some Belgians for it was in Belgium from where fries originate. The other difference is that they have many, many different sauces, and yes, mayonnaise is one of them. After fries, we decided to make our search for a store to unlock our cell phone so that we could get a Belgian SIM card our main priority. Throughout the day it had been passively sought as we walked around the city, but with it beginning to become dinner time and because we hadn’t left a note at Alex and Katarzyna’s expressing our intentions for dinner, we wanted to make sure were back at a decent time to dine with them since we had decided to move closer to the city center and stay with the hosts that we had tried to stay with on Sunday. We also didn’t want to wear out our welcome and had discovered that we were actually the first people that Katarzyna and Alex had hosted. After just about giving up and heading back to the station, we finally found a shady enough cellphone purveyor to unlock our phone! It would cost 10 Euro, and we had to leave it over night, but since we couldn’t use it as it was that was not a problem. After offering to make dinner and settling on just providing the salad since we had to buy a new tube at the store anyway, we had another nice dinner with our hosts. It turns out that both of our all our extra tubes had slow leaks since we‘ve had to patch them all at this point in order to repair the four flat tires that Alyssa has had up until now, and as a form of rather blunt foreshadowing, let me tell you that she is not finished with those poor tubes yet either! After eating and drinking more of the vodka for which our hosts could not help but noticing our fondness, we - yes, a little drunkenly(sorry Mom) - went to bed.