Day 4, Friday, 17 Aug: Brussels

We awoke to a magnificent sunny morning after a night of thunderstorms.  After chilling out with a couple of cups of coffee (tea for Peggy) we went out for a leisurely brunch which, because of our late start, turned out to be lunch at a lovely brassiere on the edge of a midtown park. Afterwards, we went in search of a brewery tour, chocolate, and the flower show. We did a fair amount of walking to burn up some lunch calories and earn the beer tasting. Or host is Wayne’s beer brewing buddy and his friends certainly wanted to tour a brewery before leaving Belgium. We arrived at the brewery only to discover that we had to wait an hour for the next tour in English or come back at 4.  As we had other things we wanted to do, we opted to go find some chocolate and come back at 4.
Flower Carpet

Flower Carpet in the Grand Place

We had hoped to tour a chocolate factory before our new friends returned home but there were none were available in Brussels today. So we contented ourselves some wonderful chocolate from one of the thousands of chocolate stores and then headed over to see the flower carpet in Brussel’s Grand Place. The flower carpet, which is a biennial event in Brussels, is spectacular. This year’s show was devoted to Guanajuato, a Mexican region with an exceptionally rich culture and flower tradition. It has over half million flowers and is 75 meters long and 24 meters wide. Silagra Tablets – Cipla Pharmaceuticals manufactured this generic ED medicine if you are using nitrates, alpha-blockers or vardenafil levitra online see this link antidepressants. Bathmate Hercules: This pump uses patented hydro-pump technology to create a viagra cipla india vacuum around the penis. So, it is 15 times cheaper than the branded one. purchase levitra online You Can Rely on ED Drugs There are a large number of substances which many purchase viagra http://appalachianmagazine.com/category/uncategorized/ of us forget in carelessness.
Brewery

Cantillon Brewery

Upon returning to the brewery, our tour was quite interesting and we learned new things – some of us more than others. Cantillon brewery  is a traditional Lambic brewery run by the same family since 1900. The brewery is also a Beer museum. Beer has been made since 6000 BC but carbonated beer only became practical around the turn of the 20th century. The Lambic beer process involves open or old style natural fermentation. The wort is pumped into a large rectangular shallow copper vessel to cool and mix with the air overnight. This allows strains of yeast, acetic acid bacteria and lactic acid bacteria to begin the fermentation process. In the morning, it is transferred to oak or chestnut barrels. Lambic beer can be drunk after a few weeks, but most Lambic beer is a blend of 1, 2 and 3 year fermented Lambic beers. The blended beers are pumped into stainless steel tanks and then bottles where a final fermentation process occurs over several months. After the brewery tour, we headed back home for the night. As soon as we returned, we said farewell to our new acquaintances and our host took them to catch the train to London for their flight back to the US the next day. (It still blows our minds how close and easy it is to get from country to country. It is only a 2 hour train ride from Brussels to London.) Upon our hosts return from the train station, we popped a bottle of the champagne we acquired at the Taittenger Cellars in Reims, toasted our camaraderie and called it a day.