Brussels

We arrived in Brussels in the rain. From what I understand, that is not uncommon. AT one point, we were walking around the old city, and saw a man walk out of a bar. He said, “It’s raining. This must be Brussels!” We came to expect the rain, and when you expect it, it ceases to be a real problem. The train depot, on the other hand, was a mess. There was construction around the place, and we could not seem to get to the cab stand. So we flagged down a cab dropping someone else off, and headed down to our hotel.

Dan on the Balcony of our room in the Metropole

The cabbie was an Iranian, and he could not say enough bad things about Belgium, and the Belgians. It seems that he has been living there only about 15 years, and couldn’t wait to get back to Iran and start a family. Yeah, right. One of those actions speak louder than words issues. IN any case, he did not take TOO much advantage of us, and dropped us off in front of The Metropole on the edge of the old town.

Art Nouveau window in the Metropole

The hotel is one of the most beautiful that we have stayed in. It is a 100 year old, Art Nouveau hotel within walking distance of most of the fun things to do in Brussels. Now, some may say that there are not too many fun things to do in Brussels, but I heartily disagree. There is some wonderful old architecture, some great Art Nouveau architecture (Remember that Victor Horta is from Brussels)

After we settled into the hotel (and marveled at all the cool stuff in the hotel) we started wandering around town to see what we could see. Of course, our first stop is always a cash machine to get some local currency. This seemed to be a fool’s errand in Brussels, though.

We stopped at three banks, and asked four different policemen where to get money, when one of them told us that most of the cash machines had already run out of money, because there was a festival in town! (A medieval fest, as it would be) He aid that he was out of money, too! Then he told us of a new bank, where he though we would have better luck. We did, though we had to wait in line behind about five people.

Cash in hand, we headed around the old city. There are wonderful buildings in this city. We also found the famous “Manekin Pis”. Interestingly enough, a popular sale item in Rome was a cigarette lighter based on Manekin Pis. You can figure out where the flame comes from.

Manekin Pis

Manekin Pis as a Venezuelan

This little statue (about 2.5 feet tall) is a huge tourist attraction in the city. He was stolen a number of times, usually held hostage for some political reason or another. They also dress him up daily, or almost daily, in various costumes. While we were there, we saw him dressed as a Venezuelan. Go figure.

While wandering around the city, we passed a restaurant called Falstaff’s. It was housed in an old Art Nouveau building, and was beautiful. The food was fantastic, also. We had one of our best meals of the trip there. Especially of note were the appetizers. We had pate, and a salmon and goat cheese plate. Later, we had a duck terraine as well. Talk about good! We had some typical Belgian dishes for our main course – Waterzooie of Chicken, Beer Stew, Pork stew, and Steak Tartar. Highly recommended place.

The next day we went to the train station to complete our final tickets – the Eurostar to London. After we finished that, we were going to take the tram back to the hotel. Well, it was more confusing that it should have been, and we ended up going MILES out of our way, in the opposite direction of the hotel!

Now, some of you may decide that this was planned, but we ended up very close to the Horta museum (we had talked about going there, but decided to put it off until the following day. Doreen was the one who chose the tram, by the way. She is also the one who wanted to see the museum…)

In any case, we ended up at the museum after an amusing attempt to eat real Belgian food nearby. We went into and out of three different places, and ended up eating frites (French Fries) and mayonnaise. YuM! The owner was a Greek guy, who was shutting his place down for a MONTH because he was taking a trip to the US. THAT is getting your priorities right!

The Horta musem was his old house. He designed everything in the house, down to the door pulls and hinges. No kidding. The thing about that is that a little bit of Art Nouveau goes a LONG WAY, and a LOT of Art Nouveau goes too far. But it was the coolest place…

Cartoon Museum

We walked and walked while in Brussels, which is not really much of a surprise, except that there was a constant drizzle for most of the time that we were walking. We saw the Cartoonist’s Museum, the National Museum, the Big Square, the Small Square, and plenty of bars. Brussels is the first city that we were in that had bars like they have in Wisconsin – just regular bars. So we enjoyed ourselves in places like the Loplop, where they were playing Rasta music and singing along with Bob Marley.

Town Hall

The Big Square

Leaving Brussels, we decided that we should have spent more time there. We wanted to stay everywhere just a little longer than we did, but in Brussels we had such a short time, that we really wanted to go back soon.

View from the Hotel

Self Portrait on hotel balony

RETURN TO GRAND TOUR HOMEPAGE!