A Day in Brussels

The other reason I have been so absent is that I really didn’t feel like writing this post. I’m not entirely sure why.
Maybe because I wasn’t in the best of moods that day.
Maybe because Brussels just didn’t inspire me to write.
So I decided I just wouldn’t, I mean, why write a post just for the sake of it? It would be crap most likely. But whenever I thought about writing about something else I would remember little things that happened in Belgium that I want to tell you. Weird right?

It’s not that Brussels isn’t a nice city. In fact it was nicer than I expected seeing as even the use-it map said its ugly!
Ok sure, its not the most beautiful city. Its a bit of a mix match of massive modern buildings, old belgian ones and just normal city flats and stuff. Which we conveniently missed in out in our photos ;)

We actually pre planned some of our day!
We did the european walk which led around various massive buildings. This was the first:

It was quite a cool walk actually because it took us through a variety of places so we saw real life in Brussels not just all the touristy center.

This is the square of the poorest area in Brussels (according to our map that is).

A cool painting on a building. Its a really multi cultural city, I guess most European capitals are though.

We stopped for a mini picnic in this lovely little park. Apparently this little lake or giant pond was made to attract posh people to the area and all the houses had to have really nice facades making it all really beautiful. There were loads of birds! And people brought all sorts of leftovers for them. You can see the spaghetti in one of the photos. Actually we have seen this kind of thing else where in Belgium, animals in towns for people to give their leftovers to. In De Haan there where goats and rabbits!! Literally at the edge of a park! How great is that? Assuming they were happy… They had a reasonable amount of space and plenty of food…

Anyway back to Brussels! Heres the park and my new feathery friends.

On our walk through the posh neighbourhood we saw one of Horta’s buildings. Not the most amazing one but the others where far away :(

The posh houses:

And a particularly funky one :)

Another important building. People in suits make all sorts of decisions about us in there.

Brussels has an arc! Like in Paris and Berlin :)

With a mini castle in the garden!

Ok, I’m totally in love with Belgian architecture. I took way to many photos of houses! Who says Brussels is ugly!

Tadaaaa the european parliment! It is a pretty cool building. You can go inside but we were already 3 hours into our time in Brussels so we didn’t.

From here we walked literally across the city centre to the other side to visit the use-it headquarters which were closed lunch! So we found a french fries place and headed back once once it was opened. We collected a map for Ghent (the next city we will visit) and Porto (where David is from) which I plan to use when we are there :)
Use-it is a Belgian company and all their maps are free!

We spent the afternoon wandering around, David was blown away by the central square. Personally I thought it was a bit over the top. So much gold!

Then we met up with Inne, the eldest daughter and went for waffles! In a little grandma cafe, it was excelent! So simple yet so good. Apparently only the tourist pile their waffles with cream and strawberries and whatever else they can get their hands on.

Then we decided to follow the flow of tourist towards Belgian pride and joy: some strange statue of a peeing child. Weird hey? Can you see it?

There are all sorts of stories about it, my favourite is that a father had lost his child. He declared that he missed him so much that once he found him he would make a statue of him doing whatever he was doing when found… But it still seems like an awful lot of fuss about nothing. They make outfits for him too. I was disappointed he wasn’t wearing one at the time.

Another highlight of the day was discovering a lego version of the palace! Unfortunately it was like 14€ to see the rest of the exhibition but we were happy with our free bit :D

Oh, and climbing a massive car park for a free panoramic view of Brussels, there are huge benefits of visiting cities with students ;) it was getting dark by this point so we couldn’t see an awful lot and it was so incredibly cold being up high!

Close by there was this super cool errr… Interactive sculpture? It described how glaciers break and as you walked through you can hear all the different sounds they make, something to do with pressure… It was accompanied with information which I have conveniently forgotten. Still, what a great thing to have in a random square!

We still had a while until our train so David suggested walking to Brussels Midi station instead of Central, then we would see some more if the city. The plan completely back fired as it started to rain, absolutely pouring it down! We eventually got there completely drenched and still had a 20min cold wait until our train….