We made it back into town at 4:35 p.m., which gave me roughly 10 minutes to make it to the museum. Elia went to go talk to the counter guy and attempt to get a refund for her ticket (to no avail) while I hightailed it to the museum, and arrived just as they were closing. I tried to convince the lady working the counter to let me in, but again, no cigar.
Feeling kind of bummed, I walked to a nearby fountain and just sat. I was feeling pretty overwhelmed (or maybe underwhelmed) in that moment, and just as I felt like crying, some random busker on the street began singing this cute and quirky rendition of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" from somewhere behind me. And somehow, that did the trick. Suddenly, I felt OK, and headed down to the more central area of town to meet up with Elia.
I wanted to go back to the apartment for a bit and she wanted to walk around, so we parted ways, and I was successfully able to navigate myself back to Sander's place.
The main problem I've been experiencing in Europe (which can't really be attributed to anything but myself) is directional confusion. For example, I can be walking a certain way and just automatically assume that it's North, when it's really South. I know there are things for this - like the sun - but when you're trying to navigate streets with names in French and Dutch and not English, thinking to look at the sun's location just doesn't cross your mind as easily. Or at least, it didn't cross mine.
When I made it back to the apartment, Sander was already home from work, with intentions to take a nap since we had all been up late and he didn't have the luxury of sleeping in like we did. But the World Cup was on, (Switzerland versus Spain, I think) so he ended up watching that instead. He also knew I was feeling a bit down, so he busted out his juggling skills, which made for quite an impressive show.
After an hour or so of milling about the apartment, we made our way down to meet up with Elia, who was camped out on the steps of a museum and appeared to have picked up a friend along the way. I don't have many details to share here, as I'm not the one who spent a good half hour with the man, but apparently he had asked her to watch his belongings while he went shopping and that made them BFF4L, at least in his mind. He was sweet though, and ended up giving up a giant carton of yogurt, and three spoons with which to enjoy it. We told him repeatedly that we didn't need it, but he insisted on it. I guess maybe giving yogurt to new friends is a Flemish tradition we hadn't heard of before, or something...
By this time, it was nearing 7 p.m., so we made our way through the winding streets and various neighborhoods, making a detour to check out the royal palace (not bad digs).
Our final destination was a Thai food restaurant, which Elia had been craving. The menu only had three vegetarian options, but for Belgium, that was pretty good (as I have come to understand). I got the rice and vegetables and it was quite excellent, and along with that, I had more Belgian beer. We sat outside on the sidewalk, and dinner was nice, although we had really awful service from a jerk of a French guy, something which Sander assures me is rather typical of Brussels (the bad service).
Our next mission was, first, to sample Belgian fries (apparently fries in the Netherlands are inferior to them) and then find ice cream. Sander took us to Manneken Frites, which he claims are the best fries in all of Brussels. We got some kind of sauce based on his recommendation (one which I don't quite know the name of) on top, and it reminded me a lot of In-N-Out special sauce (aka nom).
Next we wanted to get ice cream. Elia saw a couple walking carrying cones, so she asked them where they got it and we went there next. I got a Dutch kind of cookie-infused ice cream which I don't remember the name of (what was it Sander?) and we walked around the downtown area, which was beautiful with the lighting of the sun just behind buildings.
Eventually we made our way back to the apartment, as we all had to be up early the next morning. Elia went into the room to read and talk to Rich, and Sander and I did computer stuff and drank more Belgian beer and chatted, until around midnight. Finally, we decided to call it a night, so it was off to bed, with alarms set for 6:45 a.m. for our morning trip to Paris.
