Just a quick trip...

So. A couple of years ago, one of my wife's relatives mentioned something to her off-handedly. 

That's really the crux of the story. The boss' aunt happened to mention "Hey, there's this thing called 'The Flower Carpet' every other year in Brussels. You should check it out if you have a chance."

Cue my darling wife setting a calendar appointment to periodically check hotel rates in Brussels. She ended up trading in points and getting us a room in downtown Brussels, 2 blocks from the main square where the flower carpet was displayed.

Changing gears for a brief second: Every year, I spend the month of September back in the states. This visit will be a little special, since Cori is turning 21 on August 20th. I thought it'd be appropriate to head back to the states a few days early and celebrate this milestone birthday with her. So, we bought me a ticket to fly from Frankfurt to Knoxville on the 18th.

Guess when the Flower Carpet is this year. Go ahead, guess. August 15th-18th.

So, looks like we're taking a last minute trip to Brussels. We drove out on Thursday, drove back on Saturday. I fly out on Sunday. How do I keep letting myself getting talked into this?!?!?

Thursday was a holiday, so we hit the road late morning, for the 4 1/2 hour drive to Brussels. We took a different way out of Germany (seems like we take a different way out every time!) and this time we happened to see a Haribo factory from the highway - and y'all know how we love factory tours!

It took us about 15 minutes of backtracking, but we made it back to the factory. They didn't advertise any kind of factory tour, but they did have a factory outlet store, so we (of course) stimulated the local economy.

Eventually, we made it to Brussels. Because of very strict emissions laws there, we couldn't drive in the actual city itself. We'd originally planned on parking at the airport and taking a train or metro into town, but our family travel agent had discovered a "park and ride" garage at a major metro station. We parked and  rode the metro downtown. The app that we used suggested getting off at a specific stop and walking a couple of blocks, which wasn't bad. Turns out, there was another metro stop right next to the hotel, but we'd have had to transfer metro lines at least once - it was quicker and easier just to walk.

When we travel over here, our normal pattern is to stay in the outskirts of the city, rather than in the center of downtown. We've found that for the price, we typically get better rooms the further out we go (within reason). We don't mind "commuting" downtown to get to the tourist areas, since the train/metro/bus systems are so extensive over here.

I think this is the second time we've stayed in the center of town, with Dresden being the first. While we probably won't change our pattern, walking out the front door of the hotel and immediately being in the thick of it is a nice change.

Immediately in front of our hotel, there was a water feature. Picture a shallow wading pool (with a couple of fountains in it) in the middle of the street. Looking at Google Street View, evidently the street was open to traffic a couple of years ago, and when they closed the street, they put in the little pool. Lots of foot traffic in front of the hotel, kids walking around in the water - just a cool area. (The pic is from the internet, the restaurant on the far left is attached to the hotel... the next door to the left of that restaurant is the revolving door for the hotel. The big building in the center of the pic is on the main pedestrian drag, the flower carpet is one block behind that building. The spire sticking up above that building is on the square were the flowers are - you'll see more pics later.)

That afternoon, we walked around downtown, and made our way over to the flower carpet. I'm not a big flower guy, so I didn't get too excited about it, but based on the crowds, it's evidently a big deal. You can see the crowd on the far side of the pic below. Unfortunately, the family photographer wasn't focused on exactly what I wanted to share pics of. We've had a talk, and I've been assured that it won't happen again.

The next morning, we had a free walking tour at 10:30 which met in the square with the flowers, so we made our way over there. Lots and lots of people crowded around to look at the flowers, so let's talk about them for a moment.

Assumption Day occurs the Sunday nearest to August 15th. The date the Flower Carpet opens is the Thursday prior to Assumption Day, every other year. Kinda. It started in 1971 as an advertisement for a landscaper from Ghent, and was such a hit, he continued doing it every year. The city/state government got involved after a few years (in 1986), and created an "Association," and the Association turned it into a biannual event. An application has been submitted to UNESCO to grant the Flower Carpet the status of Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.

Having said all of that, they fill the main square of the city with flowers. Lots of flowers. More than a hundred volunteers work to place close to a million flowers on a 19,000 square foot plastic template. Lots of flowers.

Did I mention enough times that there were lots of flowers?

So, on our tour, we heard about the history of Belgium and Brussels - turns out it's got a pretty complicated history. It's a pretty small country, and over the years has been ruled by several different monarchies. Now, the country is divided into 3 autonomous states: the French speaking state of Walloon to the south, the Flemish speaking state of Flanders to the north, and the Brussels-Capital Region close to the middle.

Everybody's heard of Waterloo, where Napoleon lost? That's on the outskirts of Brussels. Who knew? Certainly not I.

Anyway, lots of pretty buildings and sights on the tour:

Also, right next to the main square, we found a statue of Everard t'Serclaes, who was a 14th century citizen of Brussels. Upon the death of John III, Duke of Brabant, the Count of Flanders (who had married the duke's younger daughter) seized the city, refusing to allow Joanna (the older sister) and her husband Wenceslaus, Duke of Luxembourg entry. Everard t'Serclaes and a group of patriots scaled the city walls and drove the Flemish from the city, returning leadership to the "proper" folks. 

They created a statue of his corpse, and rubbing him is supposed to bring you good luck.

From a historical note, I found these following things interesting (skip it if you're not into history:

Wenceslaus's half brother Charles IV ended up being Holy Roman Emperor and presided over the Imperial Diet, which decreed the Golden Bull of 1365, which set rules which governed the Holy Roman Empire for over 400 years.

Additionally, the whole succession business caused quite a crisis. in 1354, Duke John III summoned representatives of all of the cities and announced that in return for their acceptance of marrying his older daughter (Joanna) to the Prince of Luxembourg (Wenceslaus), he would offer them liberal concessions. All was well, until his death the next year, in 1355. In January of 1356, Joanna and Wenceslaus signed the charter, agreeing to the provisions her father had established. Soon thereafter, Louis II (the aforementioned Count of Flanders and husband to the younger daughter of John III) invaded and occupied Brussels, making the charter meaningless. Everard t'Serclaes got the Flemish to leave, and when Joanna and Wenceslaus entered the city in October of 1356, the charter (that they'd originally signed) took effect again, and the document was renamed "The Joyous Entry of 1356." That specific document is considered the equivalent of the Magna Carta for the countries of Belgium, Luxembourg, and The Netherlands.

Enough with the historical nonsense, right? 

Our next stop was what our tour guide Tristan called "The most overrated tourist attraction in Europe": Manneken Pis (that's Dutch for "Little Pissing Man"). 

The famous statue dates back to 1619, and there doesn't seem to be any real story about it. I have found information about the history of the fountain, the location, the almost 1,000 different costumes that they dress him up in... just about everything you'd ever want to know about a 21 inch tall statue of a peeing little boy, except for the most important: WHY?!?!?

One interesting building we saw... the Brussels Palace of Justice. Originally erected between 1866 and 1883, at the time of its construction, it was the largest building in the world. Construction was originally projected to cost four million Belgian francs (equivalent to the country's entire annual public works budget at the time), but by the time construction was finished, the cost had ballooned to over 50 million Belgian francs. It remains the most important court building in Belgium. In 1984, they started a renovation project on the building, and mounted scaffolding around the building.

It's still there. Forty years later.

The scaffolding is so old, it's become unsafe and needs to be replaced.

After our tour, we wandered around and stimulated the local economy a bit, finding a couple of cool chocolate shops.

One of the things that Belgium is known for (you may remember this from our Bruges trip) is chocolate.

Godiva is probably one of the best known chocolate manufacturers in the world, and they were founded in 1926 in Brussels. Their original location is right on the main square (with all of the flowers). Of course we had to buy some from there.

Right next door to Godiva is a shop called "Mary." Turns out, Mary was founded in 1919, and since 1942 has been a Royal Warrant Holder for the monarchy of Belgium. There are 8 companies which supply chocolate to the Royal Palace (actually, Godiva is a Royal Warrant Holder as well, they just don't seem to brag about it as much as Mary does). As a part of the agreement, the company is allowed to use a specific coat of arms while advertising their product:

Here's one of the crests in one of the stores:

We wandered around town (stimulating the local economy as we roamed, of course), and ended up eating dinner in the restaurant in the hotel that night. As an aside, I had a boule of sourdough served in a metal pan (reminded me of a little paella pan), which had been cut into wedges and covered/stuffed with garlic butter. So... now I'm looking for one of those pans and I'll keep my eye out for a local bakery that sells boules of sourdough. 

The next morning, we took our time getting the room packed up and hit the road home late morning. 

On the way home, the boss scheduled a stop at a Birkenstock outlet. She's been wanting to get a pair, but felt like she wanted to do more research first - she just wanted to take a look and see what kind of prices they had. Evidently, they're pretty proud of their shoes there, as the prices weren't much lower than we've seen elsewhere.

As we were heading out (without telling our family accountant), I mapped our next destination to an outlet mall about an hour and a half outside of Frankfurt. I had originally looked at the site for the mall to see if they had a Birkenstock outlet as well - they didn't - but I saw that they had two stores that I knew she'd appreciate. At one point, she glanced at my phone (with driving directions on it), and asked where we were going (since the arrival time wouldn't get us anywhere near home). I told her that I'd made an executive decision, and we'd be making another stop.

We parked and walked into the shopping center; our first sight was a Ravensburger outlet. She was quite excited about it, and bought 4 puzzles (which you might have seen pics of on Facebook), while only spending around €30. She was quite proud of that!

Right next door to the Ravensburger store was another Haribo outlet. We stocked up on more gummy stuff - we both had a trip to the states coming up, and wanted to bring some stuff back for y'all! 

I think that's it for now, no trips for a bit, since we're both in the states for a while.