Wandering around Brussels without a guidebook

Most of today was spent traveling between Dijon and Paris and then Paris and Brussels.  The kids are getting pretty good at navigating the train stations and they have learned how to get comfortable on the train.

We made it to Brussels, settled into our hotel (the first hotel stay since we began our trip), and then set out to explore our area of Brussels.  I do not have a guidebook about Brussels, which is driving me nuts, due to my control freak nature.  I printed off information about recommended activities with kids in Brussels before leaving home and I got a map from the Concierge at the hotel, but it isn't the same.  I knew that we wanted to find the Grand Place, which was supposed to be spectacular.  Some of the streets on the map weren't clearly marked, so after a little wandering, we made it to an area that I assumed must be the Grand Place, based on the map. I like to call this photo "not the Grand Place."

I took the kids' picture and Dan and I were trying to sound excited for the kids, while at the same time, we were mumbling, "What is the big deal about this?"  Dan saw something large in the distance and suggested that we go check it out.  Thanks to him, we stumbled on the actual Grand Place, which is quite stunning!

Brussels is known for several things:  chocolate, waffles, Smurfs, mussels, frites (yes, more fries), The Grand Place and the Manneken Pis.  We plan on checking out waffles for breakfast in the morning and frites as a snack tomorrow afternoon.  We did find a Smurfs-chocolate combination in multiple store windows.  Yes, those are smurf-shaped chocolates in the window.  At over $25 for a box of twelve chocolates, I have already informed the kids that we will not be investing in any.

We decided to eat dinner in the now-located Grand Place (yay, Dan!) and try the local delicacy, mussels.  Our waiter wanted to get in on a picture.

Dan and I both ordered mussels.  They were quite delicious, and you can see that Dan won the contest between the two of us.  

After dinner, I decided that we needed to seek out the Manneken pis. I promise that I am not making this up.  This is a statue of a peeing little boy that is famous in Brussels.  It was sculpted and installed in 1619 (not a typo).  There are several different legends surrounding its creation.  You should read them on Wikipedia.  They are quite fascinating. As I stated earlier, I don't have a guidebook or a very clear map, so we wandered around for 30 minutes looking for this statue.  After asking 3 different people, including a policeman, we finally found it.  

Lots of food establishments and stores around Brussels have fake Manneken Pis displays with the boy performing different activities with his "unoccupied" hand and wearing some sort of outfit.  This was one of our favorites at a waffle stand.

We are actually turning in fairly early tonight (and enjoying central air conditioning for the first time in 2 weeks) so that we can be ready to eat waffles and go see DINOSAURS!  Finally, Jack will get to see them after talking about them for weeks.