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Published: September 14th 2014
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To be fair, Brussels never really stood a chance. I want to say that I didn’t have a bias coming into this city, but that would be a lie. Prior to the trip, every time I mentioned that I was going to Belgium, people would say things like, “Well, you’re going to Bruges, right?” or “Make sure you spend a lot of time in Bruges.” Nothing about Brussels. In fact, I started to get the sense that most people wanted to tell me to skip Brussels, but kept quiet. We also just had the most incredible week – five days in Paris with my family celebrating Mom’s big birthday and then Bruges, one of the most enchanting cities I have ever had the pleasure of visiting. Like I said, it really seemed like Brussels didn’t really stand a chance.
We left for Brussels around noon after doing a quick stop at some chocolatiers in Bruges. (This was one of the few things we hadn’t gotten the opportunity to do yet and we wanted to hit up a couple of the recommended spots before we left.) The train took only about an hour and we took a taxi to
our hotel from the train station. We got a bit of a tour of the city as we had a mix up with which hotel we were actually staying at and the scenery was quite different from the magical city we had just left. It just seemed modern from our drive and not very pretty. I kept telling myself to have an open mind. When we got to the hotel, we decided to go to one of the museums since most museums are closed on Mondays. We walked about a mile across town to the Upper Town of Brussels which is called the Upper Town, we figured out, because it is basically straight uphill. We arrived at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts with only about two hours left before the museum closed. We had the option of doing the Ancient Art/Turn of the Century Art or the Magritte Museum and the ticket lady was really no help in giving us an idea of which one was more worth our time. We finally took a chance with the Magritte Museum as we had seen very little modern art this trip. Excellent choice.
For those of you who
are unfamiliar with Rene Magritte (as was I until I realized I had seen his art before), he was a very influential Surrealist artist. Chances are, you have definitely seen his work. Think of the picture of the man in the black hat with an apple in front of his face. Ring a bell? He was also the artist who did the picture of a pipe with the caption “this is not a pipe” in French. If you still aren’t sure, google him and I’m almost positive you would recognize his work. Anyway, it was a great museum. This museum has the largest collection of his work anywhere in the world and I really loved his art. None of it makes any sense at all. After the first 10 paintings or so of trying to figure out A.) Why the heck he put certain things in his paintings and B.) Why he named his paintings something that seemed to have nothing to do with anything in the painting, I finally let myself just enjoy the art for what it was. He has some incredible artwork and you just wonder what was going on in this man’s head. Really cool stuff.
Drew and I both agreed it was an excellent choice and the museum really proved to be a conversation topic throughout the rest of our day.
When we left the museum, we walked across the street to see a very prominent looking building. (We were finding that the Upper Town was a lot prettier with nicer buildings and parks as opposed to the modern city we had driven through upon arrival.) The building was some kind of palace that we unfortunately did not know much about, but it was quite big and something pretty to see. Across from it was a park that we walked though and it was quite peaceful with fountains and lots of greenery. We continued our walk, going the long way back to our hotel and ventured into a site with a very tall pillar with a flame lit at the base of it and what looked like a war memorial with a tomb for an unknown soldier. It was quite nice in the middle of what was starting to turn back into the modern part of the city. We walked on and ventured into a botanical garden that was really beautiful to
walk through, but it was funny because you could see skyscrapers in the background and hear cars roaring by the side of the garden. It was interesting because that is a lot of what this city seems to be – a big mix of a lot of things. This particular example was the nature of a park with the backdrop of a busy city but you also saw a mix of languages (French and Dutch), a mix of people (apparently only half the population is Belgian as it is a big international city), and a mix of old and new. It is definitely a very interesting city in that way.
We finally made it back to our hotel and ended up sitting outside at the restaurant attached to our city for beers and fries. We enjoyed ourselves despite realizing that we had low expectations of Brussels considering our amazing time in Bruges and so, we decided to do our best to enjoy ourselves. After a while at the hotel restaurant, we went to a restaurant a little closer to the center for dinner that we looked up online. It was a lovely dinner with local food (they
include fries with everything!) and we ended up staying there for a while asking our waiter for beer recommendations. We spent a few hours there and were about to head back when Drew suggested we walk for a little. I agreed, but was trying to avoid seeing the city center – the Grand Place – as I wanted to save it for tomorrow. I had read in my guidebook that it was the best place in Brussels and I thought it would be a great thing to do tomorrow. We were getting close and I told Drew that I wanted to wait til tomorrow and he finally convinced me that was stupid and that we could go tomorrow as well. We stopped at a beer shop that was still open and got a beer each to take with us on our walk. We left the shop and started to walk toward the square and lo and behold – the Grand Place.
We both gasped. Like actually, gasped. The square looked like a fairytale. All of the buildings were ornately decorated in the gothic style and they were all lit up in the most beautiful way against the dark sky. The town hall was the center point of the square with its beautiful tower that looked like a place where a princess might be stuck awaiting her prince. It was truly unbelievable and so unexpected. Drew and I both realized that we had been unfair to Brussels and looking back we had nothing but an awesome day – a great museum, a nice walk through beautiful parks, two great café/restaurants to enjoy beers, fries, and other Belgian cuisine and an accidental venture into the Grand Place. Really, an awesome day. Well played, Brussels – you totally won this one.
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