venta

Life isn't half getting in the way of this LJing lark. In summary, I have been to Belgium with Mabel Gubbins and North British Sword, and had a jolly nice time. As noted before, the Belgian public is extremely polite and will form an appreciative circle the moment you break out the swords and give notice that you are going to do A Thing.

Sorry, not swords, but "Morris dancing staves". This, after much thought, is what we call our sprung-steel weapons whenever we take them through security. The idea is to make them sound so fantastically boring that no one could possibly want to ask about them, for fear we might tell them.

Anyway, in easily digestible form:

Brussels is good at beer. We went round the Cantillon brewery, a small-scale family operation which brews Lambic beer in the traditional manner using only wild yeast. If you've never tasted genuine Lambic, it's like nothing on earth. Unlike most this-is-a-stainless-steel-vat brewery tours, this one is fascinating.

Brussels is decent at chocolate. It was Easter, so it was all eggs, mostly praline-y. Ordinary corner supermarkets sell good quality dark chocolate in exciting flavours (lemon and black pepper!) very cheaply.

Brussels is bad at vegetables. You might get a side-salad if you're lucky. Our restaurants had been very carefully selected: walk in somewhere at random and vegetarian options will be either very limited or non-existent. If you're a meat eater, good luck with getting anything on the side with your beef stew and chips.

Brussels invented art nouveau, apparently. There are some amazing buildings. With little time for sight-seeing I missed a lot, but we managed half of a city-centre art nouveau walking tour on Monday morning. Two of us kept lagging behind, looking at little architectural details that weren't on the tourist information itinerary.

Brussels hates trees. Truly, they have the most aggressive pollarding policy I've ever seen. If a tree is allowed any branches at all, they will be trained into tortured-looking positions.

Brussels is quite close on the train. Even allowing for the early check in, I can be in Brussels more quickly than I can be home at my parents' house.