Sweet Travels and Food: Reservations and Beer

There are many things as you can see from my blog that excite me.
Beer is normally not one of those things.
For those of you that do drink beer, good for you!
For those of you that do not, you may get where I am coming from.

For starters, it is not only the smell that I can't get past, but the taste.
Yet despite the smells that hit my nostrils that make me want to gag...I still try beer.

When we were planning the trip, I knew that being only a short train ride away that Belgium had to be on our list.
I was looking more and more forward to going to a place that often overlooked.
A place where many tourist stop only in the train station before going somewhere else.
I will admit, we did think about going to Bruges or maybe to Luven.
That was before I saw that it was the Belgian Beer Weekend.
It was settled, we were going to Brussels.
We could not stop talking about how we were going to experience a true Belgian Weekend!
The sites, smells, beer, food, people, and music, all of this and more.

I booked the trip in January.
Yes that is a long time to have something booked.
No, I do not care. You should plan ahead and know what you are doing.
I knew this would be enough time to get everything in order before we went.

In March I had gone to Chicago it was a great time, but when I got back to the hotel the news broke.
There had been an attack.
There is something that hits you in your soul when you hear the word attack.
Two at the Brussels Airport and one at the Mallbeek Station.
My knees hit the floor in the room as I watched the chaos on the television.
I sent my husband a message and told him to call me right away.
My family knew that we would be going there and immediately tried to talk us out of going.
My heart hurt for those that had lost someone in this attack.
My heart hurt for those that lost their lives in this attack.
I was glued to the television and my phone for the rest of the trip, just to see what was unfolding.

My husband called and after getting out the words
"There was an attack in Brussels, people are dead and we may want to re-think some things."
Months passed as we talked about going every few days.
Until one day I simply said,
"We are going. This can happen here just like they did there. We can not fear the unknown."
After that day we knew that we wouldn't take anything military and we would try to not look like a tourist.
Hard to do, but we were up for the challenge.

That day we wore whatever we wanted.
Remembering that everyone will know we are Americans when we opened our mouths.
The train station was quiet, but it was 6 o'clock in the morning when we got there.
We quickly got on a smaller train to go to the part of town we wanted.
When we arrived, there were only a dozen people wondering around the streets.
The city smelled of stale beer and feces.
I wanted to leave immediately.
However, I knew we had to keep pushing on to see more of the city.

I was glad that we pushed.
The back ally that we traveled through led us to a wondrous city square.
Now that alley was not the best decision, but we made it out alive so I'm okay with it now.

After turning the corner there it was, the most beautiful square I have seen.
I would have never thought it was there, tucked within the dirty alleys.

Look

How

Pretty

They

Are!

I honestly can see why people come here now.
Since we were early enough and decided that the whole town wasn't a dump,
we started to look around the town before the Festivities started.

This church slowly became my favorite, while I was the least favorite of the lady that went into said church.

While the day was colder than what we were used to, walking around made it warmer.
We decided to go to the park

The park was really the only place that had benches, fountains, and shade from the rain.

There were a few people walking around, but mostly people were jogging.

At every entrance and exit there were security.

Each step that one took you were being watched.

Not all of this was a bad thing, but with already having reservations about being in this location; it was worrisome.

Not in a am I going to be taken and sold way, but more of a they know we are American we want to stay safe way.

As we walked back toward the festival the music got bolder and the crowds grew thicker.

You could see that the day had finally started, like a college campus on game day.

Hoards of people all over the side streets looking at the shops, rushing the ATM, and standing in the line to get drink tokens.

When getting back to the tents, there were still security at all entrances and they were still checking bags. We decided to finally find out how to get all of our beer caps and start our tasting.

The way they had setup to get the beer caps and your token was very easy to follow.

You stand in line and think about how much you were going to drink then give them that amount of money.

There was a yellow token that was a 3 Euro fee and then the rest of the cash could be put toward the caps.

I would highly suggest getting 30 Euros worth of caps to start off with so that way you won't have to stand in line again. Trust me on this...you will thank me.

Once you have the yellow token in hand and all of the caps it is time to drink!

Each place has their own board with the "price" of the beer they are "selling" and this way you can see how many caps it will take.

Most of the places were two or three, but I did see a place that asked for more.

We started off with a beer that we had no idea what it was going to taste like and just went for it.

We handed the yellow token to them with the bottle caps and off we went to find a place to listen to the music that was playing.

This was my first beer of the day.

You can also see in the back a man arguing with security because his bag was too big to bring into the tent area.

Anyway....the reason you are reading this....the beer. Back to the beer!

This beer was my favorite of the day. A raspberry beer. Who would have thought?!?

Yes, most of you are thinking that really isn't a beer, but it is to me.

It tasted like I picked a raspberry off of the vine.

A little tart, sweet, and full of flavor.

The list goes on and on with all of the different beers too!

After you finish your glass you then go back to the tent you got it from and they give you your yellow token back and you continue your day.

My husband loves Stella Artois on any given day, so many of his beers are from there.

Nothing wrong with that at all.

I mean we did have a lot of others too that day, so it evened itself out.

I kept to the fruit beers all day except for my last one.

The one from Hoegaarden is the Forbidden Fruit and a very close to the first one that I had.

This is where things are starting to get fuzzy.

See not being a beer drinker and only being on three hours of sleep.

We honestly do not remember trying this beer, but we do know that it was a blonde beer from Leffe.

I do remember that after these two pictures right here we did decide to get some food and that way we could continue drinking and make better decisions.

The food by the way....amazing!

I'll make sure to put those pictures at the end.

His beer was very dark and very strong, mine was from Silly and was called a Lady Killer.