Mannekin What?

After struggling to wake up in the morning, we managed to get out of the house around 11. It was only a half hour ride to Brussels by train and all the sites we wanted to visit were near the train station. Katie bought a map, but Brussels is very tourist friendly and we probably could have survived without one.
First, we happened to walk right into the Grand Palace/Grote Markt, which houses some really old buildings including an old judicial building and a museum. It is more of a tourist photo-op than anything else (or at least we thought so). Next, we came across signs pointing to the infamous mannekin pis. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, it is a nakad little boy urinating into a pool of water. Supposedly, a super long time ago Brussels was on fire and a little boy made a "noble" effort to save the town... our thoughts?--not very exciting. The statue stands about 2 feet tall and it is jammed into a corner of a street. But we figured, what the hay, we are here...so we snapped a couple of shots and continued on our way.
Next on our list was the Royal library and then the royal palace and the adjacent park. We went into the museum of ancient and modern art, but only made it through the ancient part because Katie really wanted to check out the Automium. A description of the Automium....a giant, and I mean giant, jack. It was built for the World Expo back in 1958.
We took the metro to its site and rode the elevator all the way to the top! We took a lap around and because the "ball" was slightly swaying. We both started to fill nauseated slash ill slash dizzy, so we both agreed on heading back down to earth! After waiting in the "elevator down line" for a solid 12 minutes, we were back on the ground floor. The positive part of the experience...there were some amazing views from that high up and we even caught a glimpse of "mini-europe" where a bunch of famous European landmarks are built at a 1 to 25 ratio. It looked like Disneyland from way up above!
We headed back to Ghent and the evening consisted of another homemade meal and bag packing, as well as an "early" bedtime. The boys tried to get us to go out again; Thank god we didn't because they didn't get home until just a little before our alarm was waking us up.