We spent one night in Brussels.   I know nothing about Brussels.   We didn’t really have a burning desire to visit Brussels (Bruges yes, thanks to the excellent Colin Farrell movie…), but the Eurostar train already took us from Paris to London and we didn’t want to leave London on the same route or by plane, so our only option was the other Eurostar route from London to Brussels!   Since our next desired city was Prague, we decided to take a couple days to get there and break up the potentially VERY LONG train ride (which still ended up being a very long train ride…every day for 3 days..)

We got to the city with some very different goals.  My husband was on a quest for the only 2 things he knew about it: beer and waffles.   Both excellent ambitions and delicious, so I fully supported those plans.   However, first I needed to find the Irish pub.

Mock all you want about the Irish because we probably deserve a lot of it.   Every Irish person I know will seek out at least one Irish pub as they travel abroad.  We had an excellent lunch several years ago at Fidel Murphy’s on the Cayman Islands (logo complete with a Cuban cigar smoking leprechaun…)  This time was special though, it was the All Ireland Championships for Gaelic Football and I needed to cheer on my team (Kerry-Up the Kingdom!)  

The game was…messy.   My team was not playing very well and the table we joined was full of Dubs shamelessly mocking our efforts.   I got into a small debate with the fan beside me at one point.   He mentioned that this was the 40th anniversary of when he met his wife—they had met in 1975 when Kerry also played Dublin and at that meet up, Kerry triumphed.   I pointed out that we needed to all cheer them on to have another Kerry victory to promise 40 more years of love for them…and in typical Irishman fashion he told me that no, he was cheering for the Dubs in hopes that they could right this wrong finally and get him out of it!

In the end, the better team won and it wasn’t mine.   While it was a sad result, I have to say that it was hard to stay down for long.   If we had been back home, we would have been with my family in the local pub watching this match sober, because Bible Belt and all that…instead we drown our sorrows in a few delicious Belgium pints during the game and wandered the city until we found some chocolate and whip cream covered waffles to enjoy as our dinner!