![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Started while sitting in Denver International Airport's lounge with a Beefeater G&T waiting for my flight home to start boarding.
I've been through five countries - seven if you count layovers - in 22 days, a long and busy trip. I've met up with old friends and new friends and people I saw less than a week before I left and people I haven't seen in 12 years.
It's been good.
I arrived in Brussels around 2pm, and wandered out into the city centre to familiarise myself with the lay of the land.
There were markets near the central metro station/railway station on the Saturday, and I wandered in for a look around, got a feel for the land, and asked a few touristy questions about what there was to do around the place. Booked myself into a beer and chocolate tour for the next day, and wandered around the neighbourhood a little.
Went to a bric-a-brac bazaar on Sunday morning, where you pay $25 EUR and get a space in which to sell anything. ANYTHING.
It was a bit of a trek to get there, even using the metro - you catch a 'glass elevator' down to the area, which is full of antique shops and suchlike.
Some of the antique shops were amazing; I didn't have time to peruse them, but I really wish I had - it would have been wonderful.
View from the elevator - there was a band playing in the square below, and the music rose up, bright and cheerful in the warm, cloudy day.
I had mussels and chips for lunch before heading out to the start of the Beer and Chocolate Walking Tour of the city, which was run by a very lovely, very knowledgeable woman whose enthusiasm for both the chocolate and the beer was palpable and translated into four hours of excellent tourguiding. Very enjoyable!
A part of the old city wall which we passed on our walking tour.
Just a building I liked: the scarlet geraniums growing in the planter boxes were a nice colour touch, I thought!
In the Grand Platz:
There was a whole lot of architectural detail that I feel like I didn't quite understand, and kind of wished I could drag my father around this part of Europe to explain all the things I wasn't getting. Or maybe there are architectural tours you can take, like the one I did in Chicago back in 2015?
One of the pubs we went to for beer tasting, which is also a theatre in which they had puppetry performances!
The tour was excellent and I met a couple of Australians on it, as well as a bunch of Americans including a businesswoman from Boston (I think, or was it Philly?) who had booked this the Sunday before a week of meetings and suchlike.
I think I went into the city every day I was in Brussels - I was hoping to have a quiet few days but that didn't end up happening. I'd definitely like to go back, it was such an interesting city! And next time I could maybe make it to Bruges, Antwerp, and Ghent.
There was a particularly amusing moment when I walked around a corner in the neighbourhood where I was staying, and was confronted by this:
Travel halfway across the world...and find an Australian wine shop around the corner!
One thing that intrigued me was how many war memorials there are in this part of Europe. I guess this is a country that's seen a lot of war - it's pretty much the stomping ground between England and France - Europe's battleground by the sea. And there were quite a few memorials for both World Wars.
I guess there are as many in Australia, just smaller - all those cenotaphs and Lest We Forget plaques - and I'm accustomed to them.
TL;DR: Brussels, would go back again.
Now it'll probably be another week before I get the Netherlands post up. And still another before I put up the Rocky Mountains National Park pics... There are quite a lot of those.
I've been through five countries - seven if you count layovers - in 22 days, a long and busy trip. I've met up with old friends and new friends and people I saw less than a week before I left and people I haven't seen in 12 years.
It's been good.
I arrived in Brussels around 2pm, and wandered out into the city centre to familiarise myself with the lay of the land.
There were markets near the central metro station/railway station on the Saturday, and I wandered in for a look around, got a feel for the land, and asked a few touristy questions about what there was to do around the place. Booked myself into a beer and chocolate tour for the next day, and wandered around the neighbourhood a little.
Went to a bric-a-brac bazaar on Sunday morning, where you pay $25 EUR and get a space in which to sell anything. ANYTHING.
It was a bit of a trek to get there, even using the metro - you catch a 'glass elevator' down to the area, which is full of antique shops and suchlike.
Some of the antique shops were amazing; I didn't have time to peruse them, but I really wish I had - it would have been wonderful.
View from the elevator - there was a band playing in the square below, and the music rose up, bright and cheerful in the warm, cloudy day.
I had mussels and chips for lunch before heading out to the start of the Beer and Chocolate Walking Tour of the city, which was run by a very lovely, very knowledgeable woman whose enthusiasm for both the chocolate and the beer was palpable and translated into four hours of excellent tourguiding. Very enjoyable!
A part of the old city wall which we passed on our walking tour.
Just a building I liked: the scarlet geraniums growing in the planter boxes were a nice colour touch, I thought!
In the Grand Platz:
There was a whole lot of architectural detail that I feel like I didn't quite understand, and kind of wished I could drag my father around this part of Europe to explain all the things I wasn't getting. Or maybe there are architectural tours you can take, like the one I did in Chicago back in 2015?
One of the pubs we went to for beer tasting, which is also a theatre in which they had puppetry performances!
The tour was excellent and I met a couple of Australians on it, as well as a bunch of Americans including a businesswoman from Boston (I think, or was it Philly?) who had booked this the Sunday before a week of meetings and suchlike.
I think I went into the city every day I was in Brussels - I was hoping to have a quiet few days but that didn't end up happening. I'd definitely like to go back, it was such an interesting city! And next time I could maybe make it to Bruges, Antwerp, and Ghent.
There was a particularly amusing moment when I walked around a corner in the neighbourhood where I was staying, and was confronted by this:
Travel halfway across the world...and find an Australian wine shop around the corner!
One thing that intrigued me was how many war memorials there are in this part of Europe. I guess this is a country that's seen a lot of war - it's pretty much the stomping ground between England and France - Europe's battleground by the sea. And there were quite a few memorials for both World Wars.
I guess there are as many in Australia, just smaller - all those cenotaphs and Lest We Forget plaques - and I'm accustomed to them.
TL;DR: Brussels, would go back again.
Now it'll probably be another week before I get the Netherlands post up. And still another before I put up the Rocky Mountains National Park pics... There are quite a lot of those.
Tags: