Galeries royales

It was our first full day in Brussels and, except for meeting Brigitte for lunch, our plans were fairly fluid. We had breakfast at a little place in the covered galleries near our apartment before heading off to explore Brussels. We had to locate an Apple Store and a Nespresso store, so with the assistance of Apple maps we went in search of these stores, stopping frequently to snap photos of the gorgeous old buildings we saw on the way.

Unfortunately, Ian’s Apple phone charger got fried yesterday. I was using it on the train, it worked initially and then stopped charging, but I didn’t notice anything unusual. However, when we got to the apartment last night and he plugged it in, it wouldn’t work and it tripped a power circuit, which meant several lights and power points wouldn’t work. That’s when Ian noticed his charger had black marks on it. We located the switchboard and re-set the tripped circuit, but his charger was cactus.

We found the Apple Store and we were assisted by the very helpful Patrick, who was chuffed to serve his first ever Australian customers. What should have been a 5 minute transaction took about 45 minutes as Patrick was very happy to chat with us about all things Australian. Finally, with a new charger purchased we farewelled Patrick in search of the Nespresso store. Again, they were very happy to be serving Australians. After we had selected our pods we were offered a coffee, which we gladly accepted.

With the essential shopping done we wandered around this beautiful city, heading back towards our apartment as we were to meet Brigitte at 1 pm for lunch. Her request was to return to the same Italian restaurant, Sole d’Italia, where we had eaten together just over 3 years ago, and we were happy to agree. We found the restaurant and, as luck would have it, we were seated at the same table!

We all chose pizzas and a lovely bottle of Nebbiolo which went down a treat. After lunch Brigitte came back to the apartment to check it out before heading off home. We did a bit of food and essentials shopping and then went out for dinner to a great wine bar called Unik - it is literally 30 metres down the road. We had a charcuterie and cheese board, including vegetables, and a glass of red. It was a great place, with fabulous food, good wine and a wonderful team of staff. In fact the guy serving us had come out to Melbourne just before ‘the COVID’ (as it is referred to in Europe) to play football for Melbourne City. This obviously didn’t happen and now he is back in Belgium working as an assistant manager in a great wine bar, his football dream gone.Lue lisää