Brussels Food & History Tour and InTentsGP

A decent night's sleep, we were off to the lobby area for our hostel breakfast with a ton of our Tomorrowland friends.  Very mediocre European continental breakfast...cereals, meats, breads, yogurt, but thankfully a coffee machine. That's OK as we were headed for a 4-hour food and history tour at 11AM today.

We quickly ate, packed our bags, and stored them again in the lockers as we wouldn't pick up our rental car until ~4:30pm after the tour. Then we boarded the Metro again to the Bruges station and made our way to a corner of the Palace area in front of a Chocolatier called Mary.  This is our 3rd time using Get Your Guide as we have been very happy with past bookings in Paris and San Francisco.  This time we were doing the "Brussels: Food Tour with Lunch, Chocolate, Beer, and Waffles."  We arrived with about 5 minutes to spare to find a young man having a quick smoke while he waited on us and the others in our party looked around.  We would find we were a small group.  The other 3 were a couple of a best friend from New York who were Dominican in ethnicity.  Super fun to talk to about travel, food, and of course the Grand Prix as they were going as well with plans to drive back and forth each day.

We started in the Palace area by entering Mary, the first female chocolatier, in Brussels in 1919.  They also have been providing chocolates, a Belgian Royal Warrant Holder, to the Belgium royal family since 1942.  We tasted several, including one we would purchase later a champagne rose.  Then out onto the Palace area we would get lots of history including the Free Masons, various artisan guilds, and Karl Marx.  He had lived there for three years until expelled in 1948 and it is where he would write his Communist Manifesto.

We would find our way now to our second chocolatier in the Palace area, Galler. Liked by many for it's minimalist packaging, free trade cocoa, and a collaboration indictive of the country with over 170 chocolatiers it's very much a forward looking business. After this we would wind our way through the streets seeing the famous Manneken Pis again and also seeing the museum that houses all the costumes he has been dressed in over the years.  Our guide informed us it was quite a treat for us to see him naked as he rarely is.  We also learned at this time due to Brussels being the NATO seat as as well as EU this is a incredibly diverse city.  Our guide claimed it to be the second most diverse city in the world.  I fact checked him and can not find that to be true, but do see that nearly 50% of Belgians do not have Belgium as their first country of origin in their registered status.

We eventually came to a store front and upon entering found several tables set for tours.  And here we would sample several beers while Tony, an elderly gentleman, prepared an amazing lunch.  First, we were each presented with a pot of mussels with onion, herbs, broth, and I think spinach.  And bread of course for soaking up the juice.  We would use our shells like tongs to eat the meat of other shells.  The second course was an amazing meatball with cherries served with a potato croquet and applesauce.  Absolutely delicious...and more beer of course.

With bellies full we walked it off for more history, different sectors of Brussels, old marina, China town, and more.  We also would visit Mannekin's mates...a girl named "Jeanneke Pis" and a dog named "Zinneke Pis."  Finally we would wind our way to the exclusive glass-domed high-end shopping areas of Saint Hubert Royal Galleries and our Waffle and Coffee tastings at Mokafe Taverne.  We learned the heavily loaded waffles you saw on other areas were not the truest.  The best were very light, cooked fresh, dusted with powder sugar, and served with a small carafe of chocolate sauce.  It was delicious!  Andy and I opted for cappuccinos.  And Alec for a super hot original hot chocolate which would require a lot of added sugar to get it to what he was accustomed.

Winding our way out we would stop again one more time at Mary for a last sampling and then a goodbye to our companions.  Again, another successful tour.  We were a little concerned at first as our guide was just returning from a month holiday, but he was a very sweet and talkative young man who we got to know well.  He's doing this while hoping to use his college education to do something in social work, preferably working with the homeless.

We gathered our bags, our rental car, and we were off to the countryside and InTentsGP for the next three nights for the Spa Formula 1 Grand Prix.  During our hour and a half drive we battled with our car to convert it to English, but we survived just fine and found a station playing live from Tomorrowland, which was fun.  Finally, about 6:30PM we pulled into a field across from a soccer club, checked in, and found our way to our large canvas yurt with blow up beds, but nice bedding for the next three nights.  Then we walked 45 minutes to the track where there was still one more race as well as to get the lay of the land for the next day.  Wow, there were a lot of people and the route we chose that night would be the only time we would take it as it was downhill there, but obviously a long uphill coming back.  We also learned our entrance was a long walk from inside.  Back at the campsite we would grab a shower in the portables they had set-up, and dinner from the catering tent, and a beer from the bar located in the soccer clubhouse.  In bed by 10PM we would be up the next morning by 6:30AM to get ready and walk to the track to see the interviews in the Fan Zone with several teams including Red Bull.