Saturday I woke went down onto the street and bought a coffee and pain au chocolat from the sandwich shop at the foot of the hotel. I walked over to the Church of Notre-Dame de Bon Secours which was ringing its bells and had my breakfast on the street below. I then headed back to my room to prepare for the day. My plan was to head out to Drie Fonteinen in the morning before meeting Mike and Anna in the afternoon. I looked up the brewery website to see a message saying the tasting room would be closed today due to staff illness. Not ideal after coming so far but these things happen. So instead I headed out to La Brocante where I had a meatloaf sandwich which was like a super delicious pork riblet subway done right , and a Girardin Geueze and then was recommended a Moriau which I later saw was in fact made by Boon. Both were good but the Girardin was excellent. Brocante was a legit Cafe with a mixture of people meeting for coffee, meeting for beer, and lone old timers coming in to have a quick Juplier, some banter with the good natured staff and then on their way. I headed out to the square outside which had a wonderful antiques market in operation.I walked back via the the wee boy pissing which was a popular tourist attraction despite being far less impressive than many of the other statues and architecture on offer. After a quick refresh and phone charge in my room I met Mike and Anna at Cantillion. We did the self guided tour , looked around , tasted the beers , bought some beer and headed to Moeder Lambic. After a couple of attempts at ordering food we got a large cheese board and a large charcuterie board and spent the afternoon drinking and eating. The night before the Manhattan based cabin crew chap had told me of a legit Belgian restaurant called Rene Friture that wasn’t touristy in Anderlecht. They went to check in to their hotel , I went and freshened up at Bazza and we arranged to converge with an uber later on to go eat at this restaurant. I had noticed the night before that the convenience stores around my hotel had amazing beer selections , Orval , Rochfort ect ect so I couldn’t resist popping out and picking up a bottle of Rochfort 10 to drink from the bottle in my room. We then headed out to the restaurant. It was indeed not touristy as none of the staff spoke English . We used google translate and common sense to deduce the menu and made our orders. They had a small but sound beer list. We started with something from De La Senne which wasn’t flash , then Duvel that was great . They also had Cantillion Geuze and Kriek. We had pickled herring , moules , Steaks , Frites and Omelete. The food was all delicious. We then cabbed back to town and said our goodbyes. I headed back to Moeder Lambic for a night cap of De Dolle Brouwers Oerbier and then slept like the innocent. The next morning I was intending to rise early pack my bags and then go see some more but the Oerbier and 3 and a 1/2 weeks of travel caught up with me and I only ended up with enough time to sort coffee and pain au chocolat my pack and then get on the Eurostar. At Paddington I dined on Fish and Chips and drank several pints of Pride and ESB at The Mad Bear and Bishop before getting on the Heathrow train. At the airport I had several Taliskas , a Guinness , a Goose Island Session IPA , a Doombar (which wasnt bad , better than GKIPA) and then the mammoth flight of Heathrow to Abu Dhabi , Abu Dhabi to Sydney where I danced in and out of the country needlessly and finally Sydney to Wellington , and Mum and Rubes and jetlag… which is the weird world I’m living in now.

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