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Published: August 25th 2008
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After our detour to Ghent, it was onto the main destination of the day: Brussels. The train journey was only half an hour, and again very easy. We amused ourselves on the journey by watching two middle-aged women who had apparently never been on a train before and just looked completely out of their depth-the concept of stations, luggage racks and all the general train stuff that you can think of were just completely alien to them! One of them looked like she'd had copious amounts of plastic surgery, so maybe all the botox had messed with her brain...I don't know, but it was extremely funny whatever the reason for the insanity! We got off at Brussels Central and had a fifteen minute walk to the hotel, which was easy enough to find but rather hard work in the stuffy weather. Thankfully, we were able to check in early but only into a smoking room-we didn't argue because it was only for one night and we needed a break before heading out, plus once the window had been open half an hour, you couldn't notice anything yukky in the air.
After a quick shower, we headed out for a walk
around the city. It was a bit of a shock after Lille and Ghent, being so much bigger and busier but we soon got used to it. Our hotel was only a 5-10 minute walk to the Grand Place so that was where we headed first, and it was absolutely
incredible. John's first reaction when we entered was actually "Woooo-aaaah!" which is about fitting, I think! The buildings were so beautiful and it was just really energised. There was a crazy game going on in the middle of the square which looked kind of like football but involved punching the ball (and no, it wasn't volleyball, before anyone thinks I'm a total idiot!) and I have no idea what was happening, but there was a big crowd that were very excited and involved in the whole event, and that really added to the atmosphere of the place. After walking around for a while taking everything in, we walked down one of the side streets to the Mannekin Pis, which John was (typically) highly amused by-to me, it was just a little boy weeing, but it is obviously very popular because the corner was really crowded with tourists.
Once John
was done taking photos from just about every conceivable angle, we continued on and basically just spent the next two or three hours walking around and seeing as much of the city as we could. We were also absolutely starving at this point, so used the first opportunity we had to get some famous Belgian frites. This happened to be outside the Notre Dame de la Chapelle, so we stopped there and sat in the sun with our chips-which were absolutely delicious! John described that as one of our 'holiday moments'-which doesn't surprise me, as he generally most enjoys any moment that involves tasty food lol ;o) After that stop, we continued onto seeing some of the major sights: the Palais de Justice (which was unfortunately covered in scaffolding, but was still very dramatic-looking nonetheless!), the Atomium (seen from a bit of a distance, but seen nonetheless!), the Petit-Sablon (a very, very pretty garden, where we stopped again for a nice, peaceful break), Cathedral des Saints Michael and Gudule and finally the Palais Royale and Parc du Bruxelles (my main memory of which is walking with a delicious chocolate and banana ice cream!).
At this point we were completely
exhausted, and had just received a text from Kim advising us that Nadal was two sets up against Federer in the Wimbledon final, so decided it was time to head back to the hotel for a rest and some tennis! When we got back, the final was in the midst of a rain delay, so I had to endure a documentary about the wonder that is Roger Federer (to anyone who doesn't know: I HATE Roger Federer!), and then when the tennis did come back on, Fed got the match back to 2-2...which was not good for my health at all. At one point, I was lying on the bed pounding my fists in agony lol and it was at this point John decided that we should head back out into the city to save my sanity! We went back to Grand Place where there was supposed to be a light show starting at 9pm-however, after getting ourselves a good spot to see it, we found nothing of the sort occuring! I wondered if I'd maybe gotten the time wrong, so we stuck around until ten...and still nothing. There were plenty of people around clearly expecting the same thing, so
I was relieved to find that I hadn't just made it up entirely lol, but when nothing had happened by 10:15pm, we decided to just give up and head back to the hotel ready for our early morning the next day. I actually wasn't all that keen on Brussels at night, as there were quite a lot of people around and it was all a bit rowdy and seedy, so it was a relief to find ourselves back at the hotel...although I wasn't so amused to get in just in time to see Rafa lift the championship (obviously, I was over the moon to see that he'd actually won, but absolutely gutted to have missed the whole final set for nothing!).
Despite the tennis distracting me, we managed to see a
lot of Brussels and really enjoyed the afternoon. I've heard lots of times that Brussels is a very ugly city, but I have to say, I didn't see it. Considering it's size, it's managed to stay very attractive for the most part and while it wasn't my favourite of all the cities we visited, I still liked it more than I thought I would. So far, our time
in Belgium was proving very successful, so we were looking forward to seeing what Antwerp had in store for us the next morning :o)
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Mary
non-member comment
Belgium
As much as I love the Grand Palace, I must admit that those Belgian frites look most tasty to me. YUMMY!! Happy travels :-)