After getting woken by our room mates very loudly packing their bags, we slept a while longer before getting up and getting ready. We walked the half hour or so into the city and went for a bit of a wander. They had some Christmas markets set up in a square and we wandered past a Belgian fries place that looked very popular. We had to find an ATM, so ended up wandering around a bit longer. We came across the main square in the city, the Grand Place, which was an absolutely beautiful square. All the buildings were very impressive, with beautiful balconies and golden trimmings all around, and there as a massive Christmas tree standing in the middle and what looked like a nativity scene being set up at one end of the square. After checking that out for a bit, practically doing circles because everything was so pretty, we found our ATM then continued to wander around the surrounding streets. We went back to the fries shop, for our first Belgian fries, then kept wandering while we ate them. They were ok, but not really anything special... But we only had mayonnaise with them (which is the standard here) so maybe we'll have to try more with a different sauce. We ended up walking through a bit of an arcade, which was full of chocolate shops! Mmmm! They smelt amazing, but we didn't go in, as our budget for that day was very small! Some of the shops even had statues made of chocolate in the windows, it was very cool! Brussels is actually a beautiful city, very unlike everything we'd heard about it being a dull, boring, ugly and unfriendly city! I wish we'd had more time there now! We kept wandering for a bit, stopping to grab a drink from a takeaway shop, and looking for stickers in a few souvenir shops. We stopped in one souvenir shop and hit the jackpot! They had a wall full of stickers, and had flag stickers for heaps of different countries! So we ended up buying stickers from the five countries that we'd missed (Netherlands, Czech, Hungary, Albania and Egypt) so we can complete the guitar at least, even if those ones are all the same style! We wandered a while longer and made our way to the famous Mannekin Pis! The statue of the ******* boy! It was ridiculously small. I had heard it was small, but from the pictures I'd seen I had expected it to be about three times the size that it was, but it was probably just about 30cm tall or so, it was tiny! Apparently no one knows the story of the Mannekin Pis, but there are a few theories. One is that there was a fire that started and the boy saw it and did the only thing he knew how to do, preventing the fire from spreading and destroying the city, and another theory is that a mans son went missing, and he vowed that if he were ever found, he would make a statue of him just as he found him, which turned out to be *******! After having a laugh and getting a few photos, we wandered on, and just kept wandering for a while. It was nice just to walk with nowhere to be. We passed a group of older men busking, with accordions, clarinets, saxophone, double bass and a type of harp or something played with mallets. They were very upbeat and very good! We watched them for a while, them began to make our way back to the hostel. We rested for a bit, and I wifi-ed while Darren had a shave, then at around 6pm we headed off and made the hour-ish walk over to Steve and Maria Grazia's place. We were welcomed in to their very nice place where we sat on their couch and had a chat and some nibbles that they had set out for us all. Steve brought over a 'selection' of Belgian beers, (which actually meant about 25 beers!) for us to choose from, so we went thorough the photos of the ones we'd already tried with him, and then tried a few others that we hadn't had yet. We ended up trying three new beers while we sat on the couches chatting, and talked with the four of them about everything from Australian and Belgian politics, school, work, holidays, travel, and everything before Maria Grazia came out from the kitchen with an announcement. She had accidentally put ham in the pasta sauce for dinner! She apologised a lot, and said she would quickly make up something for me, and after assuring her a million times it was totally fine, she whipped it up in about 10 minutes or something then we went to the table for dinner. For a quick meal, it sure was delicious! Italians just have a way with Italian food (Funny that!) and I can't even remember the last time we had a proper home-cooked meal! We ended up sharing a couple of bottles of red wine over dinner and had a lot more great conversation, and ended up doing a bit of a YouTube video exchange with the boys after the meal, sharing some funny Australian commercials, which they thought were hilarious! It was just generally a great atmosphere, great company and an overall amazing night, and there was something in the vibe of the place that really reminded me of a dinner at my auntie Susie's place. It was so nice. Eventually it was getting a little late (and we knew they had school and work in the morning) so we said we should go, and after declining their invitation to stay the night, there were hugs all round and we left with big smiles on our faces, and walked back to the hostel. (Which didn't seem to take as long as before for some reason... Too many drinks?) We got back and weren't quite ready for bed, so we went to the bar, where I had a cherry beer (ok, not great) and Darren had a coke, and we used the wifi for a bit before heading up to bed.