East of Cape Spear: A Glutton's Guide to Brussels

“Wanna go to Brussels this week?” I ask Ryan as I leisurely flip through a magazine. It’s Sunday morning and we are sipping coffee in our (now) cozy apartment, finally settling in.

“What’s there to do in Brussels?” he curiously replies.

“Um….Beer….waffles…chocolate….fries?”

And so, prompted by the most stereotypical, touristy (and gluttonous?) reply, we decide we are going to Brussels, the capital of neighbouring Belgium. By mid-afternoon, we’ve not only booked our train tickets and hotel room, Ryan’s mad sleuthing skills have turned up several interesting attractions in the city as well as a day-trip through Flanders Fields.

I’d have been content to spend three days solely enjoying said delights above, but nonetheless, by the time we arrived in Brussels early Wednesday morning after a short bus-ride from Amsterdam Centraal Station, we were excited to condense as much of the city in two short days as we could.

After checking in at our hotel—a decent room in a strange locale that failed to mention the incessant chatter from mystery folks, a mewling cat, and an abundance of cigarette smoke we would enjoy during our stay—we set out for the city centre. Along the way, we passed under the shadow of the huge dome of the Église Royale Sainte-Marie, a Catholic cathedral standing at the end of the avenue like it was watching over the place.

Our first stop was lunch in the beautiful Botanical Garden of Brussels, dating back to 1826. A lush green space and impressive statues aside, we were in a perfect place to enjoy the sunshine and the peace reserved for tourists who plan to enjoy a city with no set agenda.

Nearby stood the Congress Column, King Leopold I looking down from his elevated space in commemoration of the establishment of the Belgian constitution in 1830.

Loves 'en

There's a lot of grandiose statues in this city, but Brussels is not a place that adheres to any one style. Take this piece of . . . art, peddling through one of the main laneways. Apparently "La Cycliste" only cost Belgium 100,000 euro (that's a lot of bottles of wine from Jumbo).

Of course, there were several sites we read up on and planned to venture. One such was the decadent Grand Place, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and city square, a place bustling with life and energy. The sprawling open space is in the midst of guildhalls—places for various artists and merchant groups to meet. The Grand Place no longer serves that historic function, but the highly ornamented buildings sure lend an impressive feeling to the place.

Lest the many tourists that inevitably always swarm the square not scare me off, I handed Ryan my camera and sang Part 3 of A Silly Girl Sings a Silly NL Song in a Really Cool Place. Phew!

I’ve been blessed with seeing some really neat places and cities (and singing silly songs there) and I’m always intrigued to find out what a city boasts as its tourist attractions. What makes something so significant that it becomes elevated and othered—whereby it exists outside the ordinary? What drives the attraction we have to the exotic, culturally significant, and special elements of a place? Some of those are more obvious than others; Grand Place was such a place. The Eiffel Tower, the CN Tower, and the Willis Tower were all such places for me: extraordinary and innovative expressions of human creativity.

Some things, though, I just don’t understand the appeal. Such was Manneken Pis—a tiny bronze statue of a little boy literally pissing into the fountain, located not far from the Grand Place. We stumbled on it nearly by accident, the way tourists do when they follow other tourists taking pictures. We had to push our way past the crowd for our own shot at glory, albeit our intentions were less about memorializing our amazing luck to behold such a great statue and more about capturing our WTF.

To be fair, the statue IS from 1618, so it’s cool that it’s so old. I guess. Plus it inspired an amazing souvenir opportunity:

Buy one or 1000 for yourself and all your friends

I should mention that by this point, I had already checked off THREE of the essentials off of my list:

Beer

The effect of 8% beer: neither of us really remembers taking this photo

Waffles

There are scarce enough emojis to capture the joy

Chocolate

Did you know that there are over a thousand unique Belgian beers? If I had the time (and regrettably for all but my waistline, I do not), I could have them all in just over three years! We sampled several kinds and brought home some Maredsous—a beautiful blond Abbey traditional ale. We were tipped off to Abbey beers by a lovely Australian couple we met and were intrigued to learn that this special distinction is reserved for beers brewed by monks at a monastery. I kid you not, they truly are heavenly, and a chunk of the proceeds from this beer goes to charity.

Similarly, did you know that the reason Belgian chocolate is so delicious is because, besides for often being laboriously hand-made, the inclusion of artificial, vegetable-based or palm-oil-based fats are omitted. The mouth-watering chocolate is widely available and we window-shopped at several shops, enjoying the free samples and the odd indulgence. We'd have brought home more pieces for souvenirs, but it was a hot day, and it would have been a sin to let them melt—so letting them melt in our mouths seemed like the only reasonable thing to do.

Finally, did you know that a certain young gal we shall not name can ravenously eat several Belgian waffles in quick succession? You’d be silly not to, at one euro each!

Thanks, Manneken Pis: you're good for something

After all that chocolate, beer, and waffles, you'd think we'd just collapse in bed with a stomach ache, but by now it was time for supper. We happened upon De Ultieme Hallucinatie, a beautiful neo classical mansion from 1850 that was converted into a non-pretentious restaurant with three distinct wings, flourished with French and Greek designs. We ate delicious pasta beneath the evening air on an open terrace coloured with ferns and moss, filling the last hole in our bellies and topping off our night.

Ryan wrote a beautiful post about our Thursday, which leads me to Friday, our last day in Brussels. Guess what? We ate a bunch of food again.

On a whim, we also decided to visit the Parlamentarium, a free exhibition presenting the history of the European Union, from the First World War and through the various social and political shifts that have impacted European life since then. The placement of the exhibit in Brussels makes sense—the city is a global city for diplomatic meetings, but it's also the most important seat of the European Parliament, where the decisions that impact the lives of some 503 million citizens. We took an informative audio tour and learned how the EU was formed, how it operates, and the issues it faced (and continues to face). We’ve noticed that museums here are extraordinarily interactive, and it was refreshing to learn through such dynamic and interactive media in a number of languages.