Our second full day in Brussels was a very rainy one. Up to this point, we've generally watched the rain happen from inside, our impeccable timing keeping us dry. Not today. A quick bite for breakfast across from our hotel, and off to the Musical Instrument Museum! This place was fantastic, really. They start by giving you headphones -- nice little Sennheiser infrared headphones, and tell you that if you stand on a little numbered sticker on the floor, you'll hear the instruments you're looking at. And it generally worked like a charm! You start by looking at folk instruments through the ages, then move on to western classical instruments, and then a floor devoted to strings and keyboards. Really fascinating, all very wonderful sounding. Then up to the 6th floor to the cafe for a great view of the city. If you want, you can head down to the basement to see an interactive display of instruments, plus some weird all-in-one monstrosities that are a cross between a jukebox, a player piano, and a one man band. That visit took us four hours, with us leaving right at closing time. We hopped a bus to Grand Place/Grote Markt to take in the scenery, but we got caught in a downpour just as we arrived. Luckily, our handy dandy super-collapsible travel umbrellas saved the day, and after a brief stop in a parking garage waiting for the torrent to pass, we were back underway. We stopped in a little bar on the square to have a beer and plan the rest of the day. After the beer, we grabbed a waffle (since we hadn't done that yet), and did some chocolate shopping. I bought a lot of chocolate souvenirs that I'm going to ship home if I want to not check baggage (and lug pounds and pounds of yummy belgian chocolate with me over the next few days). Tomorrow, before we leave town, I'm going to do some beer shopping as well and try to ship everything home at once. After our chocolate shopping, we headed back to the hotel, dropped off our things, then had dinner at a nice little Italian take-out/cafe just up the road. Tomorrow, we check out, do the aforementioned beer shopping, visit the post office, then hop a train to Haarlem in the Netherlands for two nights before it's off for a week in London. Yay! Pics from today are here.