Brussels

June 26 & 27, 2010

We arrived at the Bruxelles-Midi/Brussel-Zuid station Saturday morning. Belgium has 3 official languages: Dutch, French, and German. Since we were in the south, they spoke mostly French. Most people could speak a little English too, so we got around fine. We followed the directions that the hostel gave us and found Hotel Van Belle. We had a not so pleasant surprise once we got there, though. Preethi had booked the hostel for the wrong night (the 25th instead of the 26th), so her card was charged for the 25th, and the guy working said there was no way to transfer the payment. He said he had an opening, but we would have to pay for that night too. We spent a good two or three hours in the lobby and on the computer in the backroom trying to figure out what we were going to. When we told him we were going to sleep in the airport, he said that he could transfer the payment to a single room if we wanted. Of course we took that offer! We had to share a twin bed for the night, but as long as we had a place to sleep and shower, I was happy.

The hotel problem made us have a late start, but we still saw a lot for the first day. The first thing we did was walk in town to the city center to get some lunch. We ended up eating at this doner kebab place. I had this pot pie kind of thing, a taco that wasn't really a taco but was still good, and vlaamse frites. While we were downtown, we ran into this parade that I'm guessing was for Luxembourg since Manneken-Pis was wearing the traditional costume of Luxembourg that day. There were people wearing these massive costumes (that are really hard to describe)and were dancing and twirling in circles. There were other people dressed up too, and a funny old guy kept coming up to random people to dance with them :)

After lunch, we went to Grand Place (Grote Markt), which is where the parade ended. Some people consider Grand Place to be the most beautiful square in the world. It is surrounded by Flemish Renaissance-baroque guild houses from the 17th century, the neo-Gothic King's House, and the 15th-century Gothic Town Hall. The 300-ft tower of the Town Hall bears a spire, on which perches the archangel Michael--patron saint of the city. The Museum of the City of Brussels is also in the square and has some of Manneken Pis's 570 colorful costumes on display. I was kind of bummed that we didn't get to see the flower carpet, but it is only there for one weekend out of the entire year so I guess I can't be too disappointed. I saw pictures of it though, and it looks incredible! The first flower carpet was created in 1971 by E. Stautemens. The carpet is usually about 77 x 24 m--huge!! We spent some time looking around the square, admiring the buildings, and looking at paintings. We ended up buying some artwork there when we came back to the square later on.

Right outside of the square and under the arches of the Maison de l'Etoile is the gold statue of Everard 't Serclaes, a hero of 14th century Brussels. Touching the arm of the statue is said to bring good luck so people were like stroking her arm up and down foreverrr (haha!). Definitely had to wash my hands after that.

Our next stop was Manneken-Pis (Little Boy Peeing). We saw tons of cute shops on the way there though. We drooled as we passed the Belgian waffle shops and went into the Belgian chocolate shops to try some samples! We passed a lot of cute lace shops on the way too. Manneken-Pis is a statue/fountain of a little boy peeing. He is the "oldest citizen of Brussels", dating back to 1619. They dress him up in one of his 570 costumes on holidays (& it seems like there's a holiday every day in Brussels!).

We decided to find Jeanneke Pis (Little Girl Peeing) afterward. She's not as well known and is set within a wall, hidden behind bars. She was in the back of a little alley called Impasse de la Fidelite (Fidelity Alley) that was hard to find! I think her pig tails make her look like an elf, and for some reason she reminded me of characters from Peter Pan. We took a wrong turn before we found her, walked through a little outdoor mall, and bought souvenirs. Jeanneke is right next to Delirium cafe (Pink Elephant Bar), which was super convenient! Delirium Cafe is a bar that offers 2004 different beers from all over the world! They even hold the Guinness world record for most beers available. You should see their menu of beers--it's the size of an encyclopedia or a dictionary or something! It is a really cute place! Beer bottles line the wall along the spiral-like staircase on the way to the basement. They have a bunch of old signs hanging up tool I loved their huge barrels down in the basement that they used as tables, and the pink elephants and giant beer caps all over the ceiling! I got a Floris Framboise (strawberry beer) that was delicious! Preethi and I went up to the bar to the order, and when we came back to our big barrel table, there were 6 guys sitting there. The place was packed and there wasn't anywhere else to sit, so we decided to share the barrel. They were actually having a bachelor party for one of the guys getting married. The groom had us sign his white tee with signatures all over it. Of the six guys, 4 of them got strawberry beer which I thought was pretty funny. One of the two guys who didn't get a strawberry beer let me try his Delirium Tremens (the other beer I was thinking about getting). It was pretty good, but I'm glad I got my strawberry beer :) Yummyyy Belgian beer! They shared some of their Paprika Lay's with us, then we headed out to do some more sightseeing.

On our way to the Royal Palace, we saw a gorgeous library and art museum. We also saw the sculpture made by Alxander Calder for the US pavilion of the 1958 Brussels expo. The black, rotating sculpture sits in a fountain overlooking Mont des Arts. The view of the garden is absolutely amazing! After enjoying the view for awhile, we went to the Royal Palace--the official palace of the King of the Belgians in the centre of the nation's capital. It isn't used as a royal residence, though. The king and his family live in the Royal Castle of Laeken.

We went to Park van Brussel next, which is right behind the Royal Palace. It was nice, quiet park with lots of secluded places, statues, and fountains. I loved it :) We went to St. Michael's Cathedral afterward--aka the fake Notre Dame. I swear Brussels is trying to Paris. They had a fake Notre Dame, a fake Arc de Triomphe, they speak French, and they had little carts for escargot near the square. I don't get it. They had these funny looking benches face the cathedral that we laid on for awhile.

It was dinnertime by then, so we stopped at this Thai restaurant that we hoped would be the Wok to Walk of Brussels. It was good! Preethi and I split a sampler plate and some noodles, and I had a Jupiler beer. We went to Grand Place again on our way back to the hotel to buy some artwork, then we called it a night. I passed out as soon as we got to our room, and Preethi worked on her speech until late that night so we really only had to share the twin sized bed for a few hours. I was sound asleep so I didn't even notice.

We woke up early Sunday morning to enjoy the day before we had to catch the bus back to the airport. We were hesitant to eat the breakfast at the hotel in the morning since the guy already gave us the room pretty much for free, but he saw us in the lobby and told us not to miss out on breakfast. We headed to the dining area and enjoyed the all you can eat breakfast, coffee, and tea. It was great! One of the better breakfasts that we've had at a hostel. We filled up our water bottles, and left for Atomium!

Atomium is the symbol of Brussels--just as the Eiffel Tower is the symbol of Paris. It is a cluster of giant metal-clad spheres that was built for the 1958 World's Fair. It is enormous! Very unique too--I haven't seen anything like it before. They were setting up for a festival/party when we were there, but unfortunately we didn't have time to stick around for it. We took the metro to go see the Arc de Triomphe-Triomfboog. By the way, the metro in Brussels is an even bigger joke than the one in Paris. You can only pay in coins or with a credit card--no matter how much whatever you're buying costs. After spending 20 minutes finding a place to exchange money for coins, we bought our all day passes, walked down to the platform, and realized that we didn't need to buy one at all. Some people were scanning their passes on this little machine at the bottom of a pole, but most people were just getting on and off without tickets. There was nothing regulating who comes in or leaves. I don't know if it is just accepted that nobody buys tickets there or if they have people come around randomly to check if you have a ticket or what.

Anyway, we stopped at the EU headquarters on the way to Arc de Triomphe-Triomfboog. It was kind of anticlimatic--the building wasn't anything special. There's a really cute park in front of the arch though. There were a lot of people laying out and reading books there. The cinquantenaire arch was built to mark the 50th anniversary of Belgium's independence from the Netherlands. There was a green energy festival thing going on in front of the arch. They had this huge solar panel laying out that I think was powering everything there.

Our last stop was a final trip to Grand Place to buy chocolate and Belgian waffles. I got some chocolates that didn't have any traces of gluten in them for my family (gave it to them in Lisbon), and Preethi and I each got a gigantic waffle with strawberries, bananas, whipped cream, and chocolate syrup! We should have just split one. It was too much for one person! It was delicious!! They gave us these little bitty forks to eat them with, so we had chocolate and cream ALLL over! We were eating them on this step in front of a church across from Manneken-Pis, and this creepy 40 year old guy kind of started ruining the experience. He walked next to us, smiling and staring. It was weird. Preethi asked if he needed to get into the church, and he just shook his head and kept smiling. When he didn't leave, she asked him if he needed anything, and he shook his head and thankfully left. Manneken-Pis was wearing a maroon costume that day. Sorry I got to cut this one a little short--I'm late for class!