As it was Sunday, I attended Mass at St Nicolas church where there was Mass in English. I have discovered that Belgium and the UK have adopted the new form of the Mass BUT Germany has not. As there we no kneelers in the church, everyone stood for most of the Mass. At Holy Communion, only the male helper drank from the chalice, everyone else ‘dipped’. The majority of the ‘local’ congregation appeared to come from the Philippines or Malaysia. The church is right in the middle of the city centre and outside there was a groupsof 6 young people playing beautiful music.

Michael and I then went in search of Brussels’ most famous statues – the Pis Manequin. We found it quite easily…… We just followed a tour leader and a group of about 40 Japanese tourists. It was very disappointing really. We later found a new fountain with a similar ‘bent’ – this time of a young girl. This one is not quite as well known.

We explored one of the city’s many beer shops. Michael was enthralled. Some of the beers had alcoholic contents in excess of 13%. Some were sold in bottles similar to champagne.

By accident we found a famous watering hole – the Delerium Café. It has about 5 or 6 bars that we could see, but there may have been more. It boasted having 100 different beers and 400 vodkas. We did try a few including the Delerium Tremens (denoted with a pink elephant) which was beautiful. While we sat there sipping some of the different beers on offer we reminisced about the ale and cider festival we went to in Tenbury Wells. We agreed that the Belgium beers were head and shoulders above anything we tried in England (sorry Chris). The pub had a menu that went for pages listing all the different beers on offer. The beers we tried cost between €2 to €3.80 / glass.

Lunch was a mistake…refer to separate post.

Trying to keep cool today was a priority. The temperature reached 39°C, but it is expected to be much cooler for the rest of our stay.