Some New Friends & Le Fin de Siecle Again!

One of the best things about travelling is the friends you make along the way, especially the ones you really keep in touch with and try to see again (let’s face it, most of us will only see each other once in our lifetime if we don’t live in the same area).  We’ve met lots of people during our travels so far, but there have only been a handful we’ve regularly kept in touch with since.  I think today we’ve added two more to that list – Allie and Ryan from Florida who are in Brussels for their honeymoon and are staying at the same B&B as us

We met Allie and Ryan yesterday when they first checked in, but didn’t really talk to them until this morning when Allie came down to the kitchen while I was washing the dishes.  I’m not sure if Luc wants us to wash our own breakfast dishes (he didn’t say anything yesterday when I washed the dishes), but I can’t stand seeing a sink completely full of dishes so I’ve been washing everything after eating breakfast.  Allie heard me from their room upstairs and came down to see if it was Luc and we ended up chatting for a good hour about all kinds of stuff before heading out our separate ways to do some sightseeing.

Paul and I headed to the European Quarter of Brussels, which hosts several institutions of the European Union (including the official seats of the European Commission, Council of the European Union, European Council, and the second seat of the European Parliament).  Like Strasbourg, Brussels is sometimes considered the capital of the EU because of its concentration of EU institutions, but there doesn’t seem to be one official capital of the EU now that I’ve done some more reading (when looking up Strasbourg I had read and believed that it was the capital, but that doesn’t seem to be officially true). 

We had a brief look at the buildings, which are quite modern looking and nice, and then headed off in search of the main reason we had come to this area – the “best fries in Belgium” according to the guidebook Luc had given us.  We found the fries place, called Maison Antoine, in a square called Place Jourdan, and decided to order a cone of fries with dip each, which was totally unnecessary – we could have shared a cone and still had leftovers!  Again the fries were tasty but very heavy, and we found ourselves wishing Belgians knew how much more amazing their fries would taste if they covered them with cheese and drenched them in gravy (a.k.a. poutine in Canada!).   Maybe we should move here and open up a poutine place?!?!

When we headed back to the B&B in the afternoon, we saw Allie and Ryan again and talked to them for a while in Luc’s dining area until we decided to head out for some dinner together.  Luc had recommended Le Fin de Siecle to them as well, but they hadn’t had a chance to try it so we decided to go there again since we didn’t mind eating there for a third night in a row and we felt that Allie and Ryan had to try it.  They tried the dishes we had the first night and Paul got the carbonnades again while I tried the roast ham, which Luc had said was a traditional Flemish dish.  We also tried two new kinds of beer – Rodenbach, which has an interesting tangy flavour, and Westmalle Tripel, which is a very strong beer that isn’t available everywhere.  Although the ham was probably my least favourite of all the dishes we tried, it was still cooked amazingly well and all four of us gave our dinners rave reviews.  After a 3rd straight meal, it is official, this is the best restaurant we’ve eaten at! 

After dinner I spent a bit more time with Allie and Ryan playing poker using random Euro/American change as chips while Paul finished up his work.  We’re not sure if Luc is happy about us socializing since it means we make a bit more noise talking, but we’ve tried to keep our noise level down and we don’t think it’s unreasonable for us to hang out in each other’s rooms!  Regardless, tonight was lots of fun and it was a really refreshing change to have some new friends to hang out with – we haven’t really “hit it off” with anyone like this since Bern which was more than a month ago!  I’m thinking a trip to Florida might work its way into our travel plans in the future…