Brussels, Belgium
26 July 2015
Virginia and Dennis Johns
Thu July 23 Arrived in Brussels via train from Paris. Brussels is a hilly town and upon exiting the metro we realized we would get our exercise walking to our apartment. We were using our TomTom navigation unit to guide us and learned an important lesson. It assumes you are driving, there is no 'walk' mode, and thus it has to allow for one-way streets. After doubling back on ourselves we realized this and in subsequent uses of this tool we zoom out to see where we can short-circuit its planned route. After trudging our luggage from the metro to the apartment in the afternoon heat, Dennis was regretting that he didn't select an apartment with AC but it cooled down in the evening and was nice. It was a loft apartment with a minimal kitchen, but that was fine as we only needed it for warming leftovers one day. It had good wifi -critical facility for planning the next stages of this whirlwind trip of sampling eight European cities over the next month (Dennis kept our transportation and lodging booked only three days in advance wherever we were headed). The bedroom was in a loft with very steep stairs; we walked backwards when going down, like we do on the boat. After settling in we had some time to do a bit of a walk-about. We walked downhill into the city center. The streets were decorated with about 7-foot tall cone shaped displays of impatiens (not sure if they change the flowers at different times of the year). They added so much color to the city. Along the way we visited the Cathedral of Saint Michel and Saint Gudule which advertises itself as the local "Notre Dame" due to the similar architecture. We walked through the very up-scale mall of Galeries Royales St. Hubert -what an elegant building with a high glass ceiling. As we wandered towards the main square we saw a mixture of 16th - 18th century and modern buildings. One of the modern ones that especially caught our attention looked to have shadows of trees all the way up the sides of the building, but it was decoration. The buildings on all four sides of the Grand Place (main square) are quite ornate but the pictures you see of all the flower arrangements in the plaza happens every other year in August when they carpet the plaza in flowers -we missed it! The town hall looks like a church. We asked a local tour guide and she said that it never was a church, it has always been the town hall. Then she pointed out some embarrassing architectural errors in it's construction. Some of the buildings are decorated with gold. We walked through Parc du Brussels, a lovely large park. They had many rows of trees that had been trained such that their tops interconnected forming a tunnel -quite unique we thought, but then we saw it in some of the other European cities we visited. There were water fountains and statuary throughout. We had walked down to the city center, so we walked up back to our apartment. We decided to carefully plan our later outings to utilize the metro to get us out of downtown.
Fri July 24 We had a tour arranged for midday so we headed to town to have an early lunch at Poechenellekelder (puppet museum/beer house). We ate outside, but went in to tour the restaurant/ museum which had many dining rooms, all chock full of puppets hanging from the ceilings and related entertainment memorabilia. It is on the corner across from the Pissing Fountain, which had flocks of tourists taking photos. The sculpture of the little boy is surprisingly small but it's a Brussels icon, it was even referenced in our Berlin bicycle tour! Our tour guide admitted that the original and several replacements have been stolen over the years! We had arranged for a little bit different tour of Brussels -a chocolate and beer tour. There were just four in our group including Stella who teaches in a French school in New York and Marie our very pleasant guide. As we walked between the various chocolate shops and beer pubs, Marie would point out sights of the city. We visited about 6 chocolate shops and 6 beer pubs and in each we sampled several varieties. We started with the chocolate and we were amazed at the variety and fancy presentation in the shops. We were impressed by Marie's critique and historical background of the shops and their products (this shop has good ones of this but not so good ones of that...) Next we headed for the pubs. Virginia had to continually caution Marie to serve her just a bit of each as most Belgium beer has a higher % alcohol than US beer and she wanted to make sure she could walk to the next pub. Marie was born and raised in Paris, moved to Brussels 15 years ago. Since she knew we had just been to Paris, she commented on a few differences between the countries. For instance, éclairs are a common pastry in Paris shops, but in Brussels they have pastry shops that specialize exclusively in éclairs of many varieties (we saw such a shop). In Paris they greet with a kiss on each cheek, in Brussels they kiss just one cheek. Two unique food items in Belgium are their waffles and their french fries. There are two types of waffles: one is sweet and heavy and you just grab it and eat it with your hands as a snack, the other one is lighter and served with fruit and whipped cream -we tried the latter. We hadn't heard about their french fries before and Marie being a discriminating connoisseur made sure we knew the best place to get them. They have a unique flavor because they put beef drippings in the cooking oil and fry them twice. They are tasty but it seems every dish in Europe is served with a side of French fries and we were getting a little tired of it.
Sat July 25 Our touring began to be limited by those places that were air conditioned. We headed for Autoworld. This car museum is housed in the South Hall of the Cinquantenaire complex in an impressive marble building. On display is the amazing collection of a single person. There were cars from many countries, many makers, and many years - quite impressive. There are additional temporary exhibits and the current one was Jaguars. Enroute to the museum we walked through Parc du Cinquantenaire and happened on the Belgium Beach Volleyball Tournament. We weren't near a beach, but they had two sand courts, one for the women's teams and one for the men's. We watched for a bit as they warmed up and then saw some of the actual tournament after we had visited the museum. It was a cool day with a little rain in the afternoon (Marie had warned us that the daily weather in Brussels is quite varied all year) and so they were not wearing the swimsuit attire we normally see at beach tournaments. This was another very large park with a triple arch monument, many statues, and a colonnade with mosaic scenes.
Sun July 26 We had a late afternoon train so we checked out of the apartment early and leaving our baggage in their storage room, we started the day with a visit to the Place Royale and the adjoining gardens. As the day warmed up we headed to some museums. We spent quite a bit of time touring the Musical Instrument Museum. It was very well done. They had a large collection of mechanical, traditional, and classical instruments. The audio guide was automated so that as you neared an exhibit it would describe the instrument and give a sample of the sound. Our last stop was the Toy Museum which was just a few houses down from our apartment. They had some things in glass cases, but many items were out to be enjoyed by the visitors. It was fun looking at toys older than us, but also items we recognized from our childhood, and that of our son.
We took an evening train to Amsterdam.