Belgium's Independence Day

Delicious chocolate samples!

Air show- awesome!
Ben eating a Belgian waffle- Delicious!

The other national food of Brussels...french fries. Notice the giant dollup of white on the fries? Are you thinking- "whoops, they forgot to color it red for ketcup!"? No, they sure didn't, they is mayonnaise. No joke- you order fries, it comes with mayo. mmm-mmmm!

Smart Cars in the flag's colors.

Tuesday, July 21st was Belgium’s Independence Day. Ben didn’t have to go to work, so we thought we’d head downtown and take part in our 2nd Independence Day celebration this summer! It was fairly hot on Tuesday (80’s- which is smokin’ for Brussels), but Ben and I weren’t very smart and we both wore jeans and not-so-comfy shoes. Turned out to be a poor decision- the minute we exited the metro we were hit with a burst of hot air and saw tons of people wearing shorts (which we had heard was a “taboo” thing to do…apparently not…I’m sure you’ll see more pictures of Ben in shorts soon…). The downtown celebration was pretty cool; we got some free samples of delicious chocolates, ate a waffle, and wandered around looking at all the lovely red, yellow, and black creative combinations. We also realized that, although the Morton Pumpkin Festival is wonderful, is it definitely missing some important things. We thought the following are necessary additions to this year’s Pumpkin Festival Activities.

1. Sweet airshow- including helicopter, jets, fighter planes, etc.

2. Archery with real medieval bows and arrows.

3. Pirate band. Sure, the P-fest has marching bands...but PIRATE marching bands?!? A must.

4. Guys on stilts- why didn't we think of that?

5. African side-walk band.

Overall, it was a fun time! We didn’t see the royal family, who was supposedly out and about that day. They were in the parade, but this was my view of the parade. OH yea….