Brussels, Belgium, Europe

I got back around midnight last night and got on the phone with a car rental company to try to organise a car rental for the next week. I figured it would be nice to drive myself around southern France, Switzerland and Spain. Last night there was an issue with the rental car company’s system, so I had to call back this morning. It ended up being about two hours on the phone total, trying to get the pickup city, dropoff city, insurance, type of car and dates organised. Finally we had it all set with a decent rate, and then the bomb dropped on the whole thing. I have three cards with me, but they are all debit cards. Apparently you NEED to have a credit card to rent a car, and a debit card just won’t do. It makes no sense to me at all, but after all that planning and getting really excited about driving around for a week, I am not even allowed to rent a car. I was pretty pissed.

I stayed at the hostel until around 1pm and then went to meet Pete. We had originally planned on meeting for brunch, but he had some work to do and I was busy trying to organise the car, so it turned into a later lunch. I took all my bags from the hostel and met Pete at the Musical Instruments Museum. We didn’t actually see anything at the museum, but they have a nice rooftop terrace restaurant with a pretty good view of the city. I’ve been really lucky with the weather lately, so it was a good idea to take advantage of it and sit outside.

We finished up with lunch and headed back to his flat to drop off my bags. It’s a really nice little flat in a quiet part of town. We chilled there for about an hour and then headed out to meet some friends from last night to watch more World Cup games. Antonio first met us at Pete’s flat and then we all went to a friend’s (Markela) flat to watch the Greece vs. Colombia match. Hers was a REALLY nice flat right next to the Grand Place. The location couldn’t have been better. She also put out a pretty good spread, so it turned out to be the perfect place to watch the match. I was supporting Colombia (quietly) so I was happy that they beat Greece 3-0.

Pete and I left Markela’s place and met his friend Dom from Australia. We went to a bar called Delirium for one drink and then we went to a restaurant called Amadeus for dinner. It is an all you can eat ribs place. Dreams CAN come true! It was excellent. I had four racks of ribs, one baked potato and a beer. I was so full by the time that was over. Omar was the winner though with five racks, which is just mental.

We went to a bar called Big Game Brussels after dinner to watch the England vs. Italy match. It was an okay bar with lots of tv’s, but it was slightly ruined by all the really annoying English fans who were there. Luckily the match had a good ending with Italy winning 2-1. It kept the English fans fairly quiet, so that was the main thing. We went out to a bar after the match finished at 2am called Central Cafe that was the first smoking bar I’ve been to in Western Europe in a LONG time. Apparently it is illegal to smoke inside, but everyone does it there anyway. Not sure how that works, but it’s pretty nasty. We got a taxi home around 3am and I completely passed out.