Beautiful square

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Location: Brussels, Belgium

We found a hostel near the train station in Brussels. Before we paid, the guy at the front desk showed us the room we'd be staying in. It was a cavernous room that we would have all to ourselves, with ceilings that must have been 30 feet high. We were impressed and agreed to stay there immediately.

After relaxing in the room for a few minutes, we realized that it was poorly-lit, musty, and most of the floor space was being used to store old, broken furniture. Never mind, it was unique.

We left the hostel to go sightseeing. Lonely Planet said we were only a few feet away from "the most beautiful square in the world" (the Grand-Place). We walked to the square, agreed that it was very beautiful, and took pictures of each other standing in said square.

There was a fancy beer store at one corner of the square. We went in and talked with the owner. He described his inventory, which was exclusively Belgian.

"This beer won the world beer championship in 2002, this beer won it in 2003, this beer won it in 2004," etc.

Somehow it had escaped me that Belgium makes some of the best beers in the world. We bought several world-champion beers for about $6 each and took them back to our cavern.

It was early in our trip and we hadn't figured out laundry yet. Jacob decided to hand-wash some underwear in the sink, and draped it over some broken furniture to dry. Mike and I decided we would probably just find a laundromat later.

Later that night, we walked to Delirium Café, which holds the Guinness world record for having the most beers on tap. Its sign and entrance are decorated with the same pink elephant that's on the Delirium Tremens beer label, although I don't know what their relationship is.

We met two Belgian girls at the bar and they were offended that we didn't even know about their famous statue of a boy peeing (the "Manneken Pis"). So we all left the bar to go look at the statue in the dark. I asked the girls for their numbers, but it turns out they just really wanted to show us that statue, and they went home.

We woke up the next morning and Jacob's underwear was still wet. He couldn't think of anything to do other than just put it back in his backpack. So he was carrying around wet underwear in his backpack for the rest of the day. He didn't wash any more clothes in the sink for the rest of the trip.

Before leaving Brussels, we found a cafe that served waffles at the most beautiful square in the world, so we had Belgian waffles for breakfast in Belgium.

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