Less Than 24 Hours in Brussels

Kelly and I arrived in Brussels at 1:30pm yesterday and are leaving at 9:50am this morning. Highlights of the city:
The grand place is a cobblestone square surrounded by gorgeous buildings. It was bombed by Louis XIV I want to say? And rebuilt even grander than before -- it's pretty cool and people were picnicking in the cobblestones which was fun.
Waffles are an afternoon snack here (much like crepes in Paris) an they are delicious. So were the frites.
The most DELICIOUS smelling chocolate is everywhere! But we're waiting for Bruges -- cheaper and better chocolate.
The city as a whole is rather rough around the edges -- and has a lot of statues of people spitting or peeing etc (their mascot is a statue of a little boy peeing). Kelly and I weren't huge fans of the main touristy areas. We wandered into the gay quarter and one point and that was pretty cool -- lot's of little restaurants and awesome street art. They are very serious about comics here and it shows. Both tin-tin and the smurfs were created here (lot's of cool, but fairly expensive tin-tin stuff). Around 630 we were able to get into the apartment we were staying at -- a room in a Belgian architect's flat. He was very helpful and the apartment was very centrally located. We relaxed a little and then headed out in search of healthy food. We've been eating so much meat and bread, we needed produce! As we searched, we found our favorite part of Brussels. Past Anspach (where we are staying) is an awesome neighborhood where actual Bruxians live. We walked through awesome looking bars and restaurants where groups of friends were meeting and clearly having a wonderful time. It was a fun area and definitely our favorite -- which is surprising, as we usually feel out of place in the areas of cities where people actually live, but not so here. Definitely our favorite part of the city. We found a hip organic place and got salads and smoothies for dinner and then sat an people watched for a while. After that, we did a walk of uptown -- the more art-noveau part of town -- which was nice, until it started raining. We also stumbled upon a collection of funny sculptures of Brussels in the park (see picture of stork carrying a giant brussel sprout). Anyways, we ended up passing out before 10:30, which was actually really nice -- the weather has been taking a toll on us. This morning we got up and discovered that all the crazy people are out at 8am. We were fine, but it was weird. We ended up getting fresh croissants at a little place not far from our apartment. I had a nice cup of coffee and Kelly had absolutely phenomenal hot chocolate. It started to rain again as we walked back, but luckily stopped for our walk to the train station! I hope this weather melts off for Bruges. Rain, rain, go away! I don't have clothes for you! All in all, Brussels was an experience. Happy to be heading to Bruges =)