We had a fantastic weekend in Brussels!! The 800 kilometer drive from our house wouldn't have been too bad at all except that as usual, we were driving through rain. It took a bit longer than we had hoped, but no big deal. We crossed the Normandy Bridge at the port of Le Havre, France which is the mouth of the Seine River. That was a sight worth the drive, in and of itself! When we reached Brussels, our GPS took us right to the door of our hotel despite the heavy traffic and narrow, winding streets of the old town. We were fortunate enough to have a hotel with parking. I'm not sure what we would have done otherwise as parking looked almost impossible in the city. We immediately took off with umbrellas in hand for the Grand Place. The Grand Place is the civic center of the city and the site of commerce and markets. It is a gorgeous place to see examples of the 17th century Flemish Renaissance architecture.
When we arrived, it was already dark because of the rain, so the square was lit up with a phenomenal light show for Christmas! They had a light display projected on the Hotel de Ville (town hall) that was just fantastic.
After watching the show for quite awhile, we set off down the street to see the next most famous Brussels attraction which is the Manneken Pis. The Manneken Pis is a 1 foot high bronze statue of a young boy relieving himself into a fountain. Our boys absolutely loved it! Tabitha was not impressed.
The statue area was crowded with tourists and the streets were lined with vendors selling replicas. Max and Quincy each bought one, much to Tabitha's delight. There are many, many legends about why this statue came to be. The one that Max liked the best, is that a little boy was caught peeing on the door of a witch so she turned him into a statue and there he remains. They dress this little guy up in more than 600 costumes throughout the year. On our second day in Brussels, he was dressed as St. Nicholas. After our sight-seeing, we ate some delicious mussels with french fries, wiener schnitzel, and fish. Josh and I then sampled some of the Belgian beers.
On Saturday, we were fortunate enough to have only sporadic rain so we hit the sight-seeing trails hard.
We enjoyed the Grand Place again in daylight before heading to the Galleries of St. Hubert.
This is the oldest shopping arcade in Europe and is filled with beautiful little shops, most of which contain chocolate!
We then walked across town to the Centre Belge de la Bande Dessinee, the comic book museum of Belgium.
Quincy has really grown to love the French comic books which are a far cry from the cheap, floppy books we find in the U.S. These books are works of art and appeal to broad demographics and cover all genres.
We all had a great time at the museum as all of the kids' favorite characters were represented. I loved the building itself! It was designed by Horta in 1903 in a Art Nouveau style that was just fantastic.
After the comic book museum, we struck out for some strolling through the many Christmas markets set up around town and to do a little window shopping.
We had to partake in some of the amazing waffle (gauffres) concoctions that were sold everywhere. Absolutely delicious!
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We then walked through the Upper Town of Brussels, which is more of the financial district and the home of the parliament for both Belgium and the European Union. We were able to see the official residence of the Belgian Monarchy at the Palais Royal, where we noted fewer tourists than at the Manneken Pis!
We ended up at the Cinquantenaire Park . This park is filled with various museums (military, auto, airplane, etc) and beautiful architecture.
The center piece is a huge central arch, built in the style of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. We then headed back to the Lower Town for a delicious Italian dinner just off the Grand Place. After enjoying an episode of America's Funniest Home Videos (in English!!) on television, we tucked the kids into bed, gave them a cell phone for emergencies and headed back out.
We met up with a woman that I've seen only once in about 30 years.
"Pep" was the exchange student from Belgium who lived with my aunt and uncle for one year when I was a kid. Pep gave us a quick walking tour of some parts of Brussels before joining us for a hot drink at a pub. We had a great time catching up, sharing our European experiences and just getting to know each other better. Very fun to have know a local!
On Sunday, the sun was finally shining so we checked out of the hotel and headed to a little park just outside of the city center. The park is the home of the Atomium which was built in 1958 for the World's Fair.
We were able to ride up in a tiny elevator to the top and have a great view of Brussels and beyond. We then walked over to Mini-Europe where we strolled past all of the major sights of all the countries of the European Union in a miniature form.
Great fun!! We can't do history and architecture with our kids all the time.... We finally forced ourselves to leave Brussels at about 4 for our long drive home. The drive would have been easy this time except a dense fog enveloped just before we reached France and stayed with us for hours until we finally got away from the English Channel. Whew!! Not fun.
We had a truly great trip in a very interesting country! Half of Belgium speaks in Dutch and half in French. There is also a small group of German-speaking people so it is quite interesting. Every single sign, no matter how small, is in both Dutch and French. We heard mostly French though in restaurants and shops.
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