Continued Days in Brussels

Finally we gathered our packs and off we walked the 1.5 kms to our hotel. I had ascertained our route from the Tourist people after first buying our two train tickets to Amsterdam for Friday. Our hotel, Well, our hotel is "'smack dab in the middle'' of let''s call it, a lower, lower working class neighbourhood - and we loved it!!!!!
Only Morroccans, Egyptians and Isralies make up the population wo that means very few women are seen, mostly walking kids somewhere, met sit or stand around all day and play cards, smoke and drink beer or coffee. All the shops are run by the men and all the restaurants are run and worked by men as well. We had a dilly of a time finding a place to eat that would not upset our "fine-tuned'' stomachs -:) - but we settled on an Egyptian restaurant where we chatted with the owner for 20 minutes about his life and how it all began in Belguim.
Before we found this place, G and I walked into all the bars, restaurants and cafes only to find that women weren't appreciated . Not only that, but they were full of smoking men who looked at me as if I had three heads and at the back of each place, huge smoking bongs were lit and spewing out their lovely essence. I called them the heavy smoking snakes because they were so large. G pulled me into one of them and said that he was hungry and thought that we should stay - ""It was not too bad", he says. Yeah, right, if you have a black lung wish.
Anyway, we finally find this pleasant Egyptian place and, lo and behold, doesn't he show up his "special"room in the back set up with couches and things so that his guests can partake in some smoking. Ooooh la la.
We were advised not to walk our area after night and indeed we followed that advice but we sure loved the multi-cultural atmosphere during the day.
Our room had a radiator that we could control so that I did our laundry each night and then hung in over the rad to dry. G now calls me JoAnne Lee in respect for the Chinese laundry that I did each day.