Tue, 04 Nov 2003

author Liz	location Sydney, Australia
posted 08:52 AEDT 14/02/2004	section Europe2002/Europe/Belgium ( all photos )

Around Brussels ( No photos )
On Tuesday morning, we had a good breakfast at the hostel, and then went out to explore Brussels for the day.
On first impressions, Brussels was probably one of the most un-interesting cities I have seen. It is full of ugly high-rises and a dozen or more cranes building more high-rises. And the cloudy and misty weather didn't really help to improve things. We started out by walking through the botanic gardens, which was really pretty. There was lots of colour from the changing autumn leaves, and statues and fountains scattered here and there. We walked out of the bottom end of the gardens, past a large construction site, and then turned down a wide pedestrian street lined with clothes and shoe shops.
A little further on, we started getting into the older part of town, with nicer buildings and cobble-stone streets. Then we came to the Grand Place. This, as the name suggests, is a very grand looking square surrounded on all sides buil beautiful old buildings topped with golden statues, and these buildings were once the rich craft guild halls.
Next we walked out of one side of the square and here we found a statue of Everard 't Serclaes, a 14th century hero, and we rubbed his shiny torso for good luck. Now we were in the pretty part of town, and the obvious tourist spot too, judging by the number of tourist, Belgian chocolate and Belgian beer shops.
We saw Manneken Pis, a statue of a little boy peeing, and after seeing all the tourist parephanalea based on him, he seemed to be Belgium's biggest tourist attraction!
We made our way back to the Grand Place, and then out the other side into Galeries St Hubert, Europe's oldest glass-covered shopping arcade, and more importantly, the place that contained Neuhaus, one of the oldest chocolate shops. We went in and looked at the huge amount of expensive chocolate, and bought a small taste of chocolate to share between the two of us.
We walked through the arcade and out the other end, and then through a few more of the old streets. From there, we started going up hill, through Mont des Arts, a very pretty little park, and then higher and higher up some steps. The view out over the city from here was actually quite pretty. At the top of the hill was a large square, with trams and cars running through it (a tram driver even tooted and waved at us!) and a large church looking out over the city.
We sat on the church steps eating a snack and enjoying the view, but moved on quickly - it was cold!
We went up the road and around the corner to see the front of Palais Royal, which had a couple of guards marching out the front.
Next, we re-traced our steps a short way back to the Musée des Instruments de Musique. It boasts the world's biggest collection of musical instruments, many of which were very interesting. We were given headphones and as we walked around the museum, various songs by instruments in nearby display cases were played through the headsets. It was great to hear so much music and to get an idea of the sounds made by instruments I had never seen before.
We spent a few hours in the museum, and when we got back outside, we walked down to the Mont des Arts park to eat some food and rest our feet. We then went to a train station to find train times and prices for the next day, and then to a supermarket to get some things for dinner and a couple of incredibly cheap beers.
From the supermarket, we walked to Parc de Bruxelles, where we sat on a bench to drink our beers. It was about 3pm and we looked like homeless people, which we thought was quite hilarious! The beer wasn't nice. Mine was a raspberry beer that tasted awful, and Tim's was a 12.5% alcohol beer that tasted worse. We tried to drink them but they both got tipped out!
From the park, we slowly wandered back to our hostel, we bought some frits and mayonnaise and sat in the garden of the hostel to eat them and relax. When it got colder we moved inside.
Dinner was pasta and more cheap beers from the bar, then we sat playing cards before having a game of chess - and I actually beat Tim!! After a quick shower in the lukewarm water we went to bed.

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