Ah sleep, beautiful sleep. We snoozed all morning, which was a wonderful and unusual luxury. I seem to have had somewhere to be or something to do pretty much every day for as long as I can remember, so being able to sleep in was marvelous. Brussels was waiting for us to explore, but sometimes it's good to stay in bed on holiday. Although perhaps it would have been better to spend four hours looking at a statue of a small pissing boy and laughing and laughing and laughing and ruining the fun for everyone else.
Finally we headed out for lunch and in fine Belgian tradition I had a big bowl of mussels. I was having mussels in Brussels, but that was not funny enough for me. I would only find that amusing if the moules were served up on the actual biceps of Jean-Claude Van Damme. Then I would be having mussels in Brussels off the muscles of the Muscles from Brussels. I need that many rhymes for something to be funny. And Jean-Claude Van Damme hasn't been so busy recently so maybe he'd be prepared to give it a go.
We made up for our languorous morning by seeing the sights in the afternoon, heading to the Centre Belge de la Bande Dessinee to look at the exhibits featuring local racist, Tintin. He was, it is true, less racist as he got older and wiser, though I nearly bought a copy of "Tintin in the Congo" which displays some rather colonialist attitudes. The place was mainly full of other cartoonist's works, which meant little to me, but there are some good saucy ones on the top floor. And yet if your drop your trousers and start masturbating over them, the guards kick you out of the place, even though that was obviously what they were drawn for. The hypocrites!
Then we headed to the Cathedral, which also exhibits some excellent anti-Semitic stained-glass windows. If you are a Nazi and hate other races then Belgium is the ideal holiday destination. The stained glass windows document a ridiculous and clearly fantastical 14th Century story about a Jew from a small Flemish town stealing a communion wafer from his local church and taking it to his synagogue where he and his fellow Jews proceeded to stab it (yes, of course, that's exactly what they'd do, because even though they don't believe in Jesus or in transubstantiation they would get some pleasure out of doing that). But the joke was on them because the bread started to bleed - it was Jesus' body after all, that showed them and they ran away scared. If I'd been them and that had happened I might have renounced my Judaism. But of course the thing is that it obviously didn't happen. Even a three year old child could start picking holes in this story. Eventually the Jew was killed in a brawl- that'll teach him - and his wife returned the host to the Cathedral. Giving Christians everywhere a further excuse for their ridiculous pogroms. I hate religious people. Including Jews of course. But not exclusively Jews, so my stance is OK.
The Cathedral had some terrifying relics hidden away behind one of the altars, including the skull of Saint Elisabeth, which seemed to come with a hairnet. It's fascinating and gruesome. Plus there were big silver chalices and Bibles decorated with jewels. I couldn't help thinking that Jesus wouldn't really have approved.
We just had time to pop down to the Beer Museum which was in the cellar of one of the impressive buildings in the Grand Square. The museum was a bit rubbish, but for our six euro entry fee we were given two glasses of beer, which made it a lot cheaper than drinking in one of the cafes outside.
Of course they made me tired and woozy, but one of them had cherries in it and was practically a health drink.
It was a sweet weekend and it's just a shame that we have to come home so soon.
