Though we went for the marathon, it wasn't all business in Paris. We posed in front of the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, and The Louvre for pictures on a cold and windy day. We also headed to Disneyland Paris for a flair of the magic, European style. It was pretty much everything we remember Disney being, if not just a little smaller, but by arriving early, we never had much waiting to do.
The day before the race the girls ran their own race. At 1.2km, this was the farthest they had ever had to run. Facepaint and music pumped them up, but at the last minute Kaelia had a meltdown and cried. Taelyn took off and finished well. Kaelia cried and slogged most of the way before rallying. Finally, the reason for the visit, the marathon: Justin took off with another guy and they talked and ran together for 20 miles. Since he wasn't in prime shape, that was the limit, and at 22 miles Justin did some damage control to bring it in, albeit slowly.
With the running nonsense out of the way, we headed by train to Brussels - the land of beer, chocolate, and waffles!
One unique stop was the Atonium, a large, metal structure that has information inside. Built for the 1958 World Exhibition, the Atomium is shaped on the model of an elementary iron crystal enlarged 165 billion times. We didn't go in, but pictures in front were odd enough. Adjacent to this was Mini Europe, a crazy miniature replica of many of the buildings of the continent in scale size sprawled out on some putt-putt course looking land. After a walk through here we ended in the water park for some slides and fun.
Most of our time was spent hunting out great beer spots. We frequented Delirium, a popular one and perhaps the place with the most beer in the world (over 3000). We tried the Chevalier or "yard" of beer at the Raven and hit up places that were hundreds of years old. Amidst the hanging marionnettes at Estaminet Toone as well. We had fancy ones and good food on the plaza in front of the Grand Palace.
The girls had fun doing a city scavenger hunt and looking for the famous peeing statues. The most famous, Manneken Pis is of a boy peeing into a fountain. He has a sister, Jeanneke Pis, is squatting just in front of the Delirium Cafe. And the last, Zinneke Pis, is a dog on a street corner.
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