With all of that said we will soldier on and I will continue to report from the road. My birthday tomorrow may just be a little more somber than originally planned for.
So, yesterday we woke up and had our hotel breakfast that was about the same as the last hotel with the addition of pate. No Thanks. Then we headed to the Musee des Beaux Arts, home to a stunning amount of paintings from the 1300's on to current artists, with a whole museum dedicated to Magritte. It was a daunting task. We started with the Magritte museum because it was the smaller of the sections which meant we could get lunch between the two. What I knew of Magritte was his graphic arts work more in an art deco style. I did not realize he was one of the fathers of surrealism. It was a very fascinating look at the entirety of his life and work. His most famous works are "this is not a pipe" and a series comprised of men in bowler hats in different scenes. My favorite piece though was one called "The taste of tears" it was oddly moving and incredibly sad. When we finished we went to the cafe for a snack. The cafe here is overseen by a 3star Michelin chef but we each had a sandwich. They were tasty but they were just sandwiches. I had the curry chicken and The Mrs. opted for the ham and cheese. We did split, what was basically, shoefly pie. It was fantastic. Just the right amount of sweetness a a perfect texture. On the down side it is wrong for 65 year old woman to wear leather pants; I don't care if you are Italian. It's wrong. So on to more art. The highlight of the collection and the reason we were there were for The Mrs. a small collection of Hieronymous Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Younger. The Bosch paintings were amazing and weird as hell. For me it was the "Death of Marat" by Jacques Loise David showing the death of Jean Paul Marat. They also had a stunning collection of Peter Paul Rubens painting that were each 15 - 20 feet tall, it was very impressive to see them all together in one room. The modern art was less exciting but interesting none the less. 3 1/2 hours later we stumbled out into the sun and winced as we planned our next move. We decided on going back to the hotel to rest up for dinner. We did and then ventured out to a place we saw near the hotel called Beer Circus it was more like a beer carnival but they had a nice selection and I went for the Ichtegem "Old Brown" It is a barrel aged brown that has a light effervescent carbonation and a fantastic floral and citrus note. So far my favorite beer of the trip. For dinner I had traditional Belgian meatballs prepared with raisins and cinnamon then cooked with beer. It was good but not spectacular. The Mrs. had the carbonnade, which compared to the one I had the night before just didn't hold up but on it's own was fine. My second round I found myself unable to tear myself away from the Old Brown. This would also be a good point to say i will not be going to St. Sixtus as it is farther from the city than I had originally planned for and looks like it has become a bit of a tourist trap. I mention this because I was seated at dinner directly across from one of their shiny new six pack holders that both mocked me for my failure and comforted me in my decision. There is enough beer here to explore I will have to assert my beer dominance in another way. We then moved along, back to the Grand Palace area where we again "stummbled" upon a restaurant that The Mrs. had read about. This one was called Mokafe where we had a Belgian waffle that the Belgians could be proud of. Crisp and light and sweet and perfect. Topped of with some bananas and chocolate and we were in heaven. We went back to the hotel got the bad news and when we woke up the next morning we weighed our options. We decided we would not go to Bruges and instead aimlessly walk around the Grand Place area and see what we could see. We quickly found ourselves looking for a cookie shop for Speculoos which is a Belgian ginger snap. We found Dandoy a shop renowned for their Speculoos. They did not disappoint. From there we decided to check out the brewing museum. The Grand Place is an open courtyard the size of a football field that is ringed by a former palace, former church and the former houses for all of the trade guilds. I got my picture taken in front of the cabinetmakers and coopers guild. All are now restaurants and the like except the brewers who have been there since 1689. In the basement is a tiny little museum. For 6 euro you walk into the front room which is set up as a 17th -18th century brewery (cool) then you walk into the back room which is set up like a modern brewery and watch a propaganda film for the Belgian beer industry (less cool, but still interesting especially when they discuss lambics and gueuze.) Then you get your choice of a seasonal or a pils. They don't tell you who they are from since they represent all brewers. We each got a seasonal which was a brown. It was good but a little bitter on the finish. We ate lunch at one of the outdoor cafes that line the Grand Place. I had a nice mixed meat salad that was ham, chicken and beef all over a pile of greens with a really awesome mayo-vinaigrette The Mrs. had a croque monsieur and we shared some fries. My beer was a Tongerlo Blonde. It was kind of warm today so a light beer did me good. It had a nice bitterness but was definitely more of a mass-market beer. Then we started back to the hotel and decided to try some chocolate from Mary Chocolatier. We picked up a bark of milk chocolate and mixed nuts. The Mrs. prefers American chocolate and I prefer dark so we were both mildly disappointed. It was tasty but not really anything to write home about. Now we are resting, hoping for a better day tomorrow. I'm sure it sounds like fun but it's hard with a heavy heart.
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