Bruselas: Donde Las Luces Bailan Por Los Edificios

Another train, another city. We woke up early to catch our train, thinking that the customs we passed through for our train to Paris from London, would also require additional time. It didn’t, so we quickly became acquainted with our new favorite breakfast-on-the-go chain: Pret A Manger. Sorry Dunkin. Once we were fueled and caffeinated, we boarded the train to…sleep for the hour and a half train ride to Brussels.

Now, I had been to Paris before, about 12 years ago, but now we were entering new territory with Brussels. Not that I was scared of going to a new city. In reality, I enjoy it. Rather, I came to Paris with ideas on where things are and how to get around, and for Brussels, I didn’t know much at all. This wasn’t a problem for one big reason: Brussels isn’t that big.

The family arrived at the hotel to drop our things off before check-in, and then we were off. My strategy for travel is to get all of the site seeing out of the way early and then spend your remaining time enjoying the city. At a local cafe, we pulled up a walking tour app and mapped out where to go. We started with my personal favorite building: the city hall, Hotel de Ville. In a long plaza surrounded by beautiful buildings that I would say are typical of European cities, and smack in the middle is this gothic building that has a short wing. Rumor has it that the architect wanted to make the two wings even, but that would require closing a popular street and through way. The town preferred to keep the street and the architect was ridiculed for the asymmetry of the cities most important building. Immediately opposite of the town hall is a building called the King’s House which was erected for the Spanish to stay at and keep an eye on the people when they were under Spanish rule. The Belgians were not very fond of Spain, for good reason, but they weren’t convincing enough during our trip to shift my allegiances. Please read blog posts below for more detail.

From there, we walked down a road to the Stock Exchange, La Bourse. This landmark was very important as it was on the same street as our hotel. The building itself is very impressive, looking like a large bank. It didn’t function as a bank nor as a stock exchange as the stock exchange relocated. It was used now as a glimpse through history and also a beer garden. I knew that Belgian and I would get along since they seem to love beer possibly more than I  do. 

We then went to possibly the most loved landmark: Manneken Pis. Get your mind out of the gutter, pis can mean something different in a different language. In this language, however, it means what you think it means. This statue depicts a boy peeing into a fountain. The mythos is that when Brussels was being attacked, a child foiled the invading armies attack by peeing on a fuse. Whatever the story, the child is immortalized with what was possibly the most crowded attraction that we went to. He also dons many outfits and today he was not wearing his birthday suit. He was wearing a Santa hat and shirt with a bib number affixed to it. There are also other peeing statues including a girl, Jeanneken Pis, and a dog, Het Zinneke. These have no relation to the original statue and were created much after. We still checked them off of our list.

Continuing to piss the day away, we walked to Place Sainte-Catherine. Now, the Bourse had a small Christmas market, but the one in this square was much bigger and included a steampunk carousel that the children, and myself if I’m being honest, ate up. I had never seen a ride like that and was tempted to hop in line myself. 

Just a stone’s throw away was by far the biggest market we saw was in the plaza Marche aux Poissons, the Fish Market. We didn’t end up spending much time as it was time for us to go on our Chocolate Tour.

For our mom’s birthday, we gifted her the experience of a chocolate tour of Brussels best and well known chocolate shops. Our tour guide, Nina, was amazing. She first started with a brief history of Brussels and explained why we had been seeing street signs in both French and Dutch. The explanation was simple, given the location, and the history of different peoples passing through Belgium, the country has two official languages: French and Dutch. We had just used rudimentary French in Paris, so when I conversed with locals, I used French. Had we come from the Netherlands, maybe we would’ve spoken Dutch. 

The tour continued, we were located in what I can describe as a covered street lined by shops, or, in other words, a mall. Here in Las Galerias Royales Saint-Hubert, there were three chocolate shops we were pursuing. We started at Leonidas, a large Belgian brand with sweet chocolate, and then went to Neuburger who created his chocolates to make bitter medicines more palatable. The last stop here was to Mary’s, a rare female run chocolate chain with delicious chocolate and beautiful boxes for these treats. Mary’s chocolate was so renowned that she was the official chocolatier to the king, and I understand because the chocolate was delicious. The three shops in this mall were typical chocolates and the last two shops we were to see were more experimental.  These shops definitely did not have bad chocolate, but definitely more unique ways to create chocolates that required infusing and playing around with the bitterness.

The phases of chocolate.

All in all, the tour was a great way to get acquainted with the city. We regrouped at the hotel where some rested and others walked around the city before dinner. Our reservation was actually close to where the chocolate tour started, so we knew how to get there and budgeted enough time. When we left the hotel, there was a lot of people and a lot of commotion. Upon further inspection, there was a barrier on the sidewalk and we couldn’t cross in the direction we needed to go to for dinner. Once I saw a group of people crossing, I took the chance expecting my family to be behind me. I was admonished by a cop and my family had stayed on the other side. At this point, there was no visible way to cross and we were separated without cellular data to contact each other. We had the same destination, so I made my way there and two minutes after I arrived, the rest of the family joined me. It turned out that the outfit of Manneken Pis was informing us that the day after Christmas road race was occurring, which explained the barriers. 

After dinner, all of the commotion had ended and we decided to take our parents sneakily to the Gran Place for 10:00 PM. Why? Well, when Jared and Emma had went on their own after the chocolate tour, they discovered that every hour, the city of Brussels performs a light show that has projections on the city hall and the exterior lights on the other buildings changed colors and flickered rhythmically. It was amazing. The current theme was of Native American art and it really came alive against the city hall. It was a beautiful way to conclude our first day.

City hall covered in flowers and the surrounding buildings complementing.

The agenda for day two was simple: cover the landmarks that were a little further out, eat waffles, and beer. These landmarks were quick and included the EU Parliament, the Royal Palace, and Mont des Artes. It was quick to do and we found ourselves at the first stop of our brewery crawl that Emma created: Delirium Tremens. Now, I had seen their logo throughout Europe, but I had no clue how globally recognized they were nor that they had made an alley in Brussels into a brewery, tequileria, cafe, and absinthe house. We were there for beers, so between Emma, Spencer, and myself, we split a 10 beer flight. Also, because it was cheap and, you know, when in Brussels, we also did an absinthe shot. The shot went down like swallowing fire, but the beers were overall good. Some expiremental ones missed the boat, but one of my favorites being the cactus beer. The beer wasn’t the only cool thing, each building was so neat. The cafe in the basement where we set up base had what looked like bottle caps the size of frisbees decorating the ceiling and posters of different beers adorning the walls. I probably could have stayed all day there, but knowing how crowded it gets, we went to our second destination.

This is our face post absinthe shot.

Our second stop was a waffle house. I just needed to have a Belgian waffle in Belgium. Although the line was long due to one of the waffle irons being out of commission, it was certainly worth the wait for the strawberry and ice cream waffle I got. Then the beer tour continued. We went to two more bars before getting the recommendation to go to La Machine, a steampunk bar with amazing drinks. They even had a mechanical dragon on the ceiling. We scooted from here to the final brewery, Brasserie Surrealiste, for a beer in a beautiful venue. We then went to dinner: underneath the Gran Place in a quaint, read: small, restaurant. Our parents had trouble finding the place, but they made it there eventually.

And so concludes our two day sprint through Brussels. Now, off to London!