Trips

7/22-24 - Brussels

       At the conclusion of our Bruges post-trip with Grand Circle, we were transported to Brussels where we checked into our Novotel Airport Hotel to explore Brussels for a couple of days. We have passed through Brussels on several occasions but never stayed so we thought this would be a good chance to see the city. Pictures and descriptions of those days follow.
      We enjoyed a leisurely breakfast in Bruges and then packed up and waited for our 11:30 AM departure.  A woman driver appeared with a Volvo station wagon.  Our luggage and four of us squeezed into the car for the hour and 10-minute transfer to Brussels airport.  She drove at 130 km/h (80 MPH).  We dropped two of our fellow travelers at the airport and then she took us to the Novotel Airport Hotel that was two minutes away.
      We ate our lunch from the breakfast buffet and then walked around the neighborhood to check out restaurant and market possibilities.  We have several options including a Chi Chi’s, would you believe!  After a rest we took the hotel shuttle to the airport to see about train and bus transport for tomorrow.  We also found that the airport has a supermarket.  We shopped for dinner and breakfast to be eaten in our room.
      It was not an exciting day, but we needed a relaxing interval.
      In the morning we took the shuttle to the airport and the train into the center of Brussels (34 Euros round trip).  It was a comfortable 15-minute ride.  We had three maps and made our own walking tour.  We walked through the Galleries of St. Hubert (De La Reine).  Fancy boutiques, cafes, and chocolate shops lined the ground floor.                  

Galerie Royal St. Hubert	Galerie Royal St. Hubert
Neat champagne bottle display	We walked into the Grand Place (Grote Markt).  It was a “wow” moment.  The buildings are huge, ornate things with gold accents.  The square is surrounded by guildhalls, the city’s Town Hall, and the Bread House (Broodhuis), which was the King’s House.  Some of the buildings are now museums – a Beer Museum and the Brussels Museum.  A screened facade covered one block of buildings being renovated. It has a Starbucks in the middle.  Every two years in August, an enormous "flower carpet" is set up in the Grand Place for a few days. A million colorful begonias are set up in patterns, and the display covers a full 79 by 253 ft. The first flower carpet was made in 1971, and due to its popularity, the tradition was continued.  Too bad we missed seeing that!
Town Hall	Town Hall
Renovating guild halls	Maison des Duc’s de Brabant - House of the Dukes of Brabant
Guild Hall	Guild Hall
Manneken Pis statue	Next we walked to find the Manneken Pis.  A sculptor in the 17th c. lost his son and declared that he would build a statue of his son in the position in which he found him.  The son was peeing when found and hence the statue.        We then walked up to the Bourse Building on H. Maus Straat and then to the Royal Monnaie Theater, the opera house.  It was built in the 18th c.  We walked over to the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula.
Bourse building	Royal Monnaie Theater - opera house
Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula	Street scene
We were hungry so we sat at a bakery and ate pizzettas.  They were like pizzas and were very tasty.        On the way to the Royal Palace we passed the Museum of Musical Instruments with a collection of over 8,000 instruments.  It may be worth going into.  It is in the Old England building.  The palace of King Charles V had a tram parked in front of it blocking all views so we turned and walked through the Park of Brussels with a large pool and spraying fountain.  It was very hot and looked very inviting but we left it to the children.  We went looking for some of the comic strip paintings or statues dotted around the city.  Brussels is famous for its many comic strips.  We found a large painting of Scorpion on the side of a building and then found a fiberglass statue of a blue somebody that was not a Smurf.
Town Hall spire	Garden of the Mont des Arts
Museum of Musical Instruments	Museum of Musical Instruments
Royal Palace	Fountain in Brussels Park
Comic strip mural - Scorpion	Comic strip statue
Cargo container sculpture	We were hot and tired and couldn’t get waited on at a cafe to get a Belgian waffle (Americans are so impatient!) so we headed for the train station and rode back to the airport.  We walked through the airport looking for a scoop of ice cream.  It was not to be had.  In the grocery store we bought dinner and breakfast and a Magnum ice cream bar.  It hit the spot!        We were back in our cool room by 5 PM.
This morning we took the shuttle bus, the regional train, and the metro on an hour and 20-minute commute to the northern part of Brussels to see the Atomium and to tour “Mini-Europe.”  The Atomium is a model of a metal crystal enlarged 165-billion times.  It looks like a silver atom.  It was built for the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair.  It stands 102 meters high.  It now houses restaurants and museums in the nine balls.  We did not go into it.        The Mini-Europe park is a tribute to the European Union and as you walk along the outdoor paths you see miniature scale models of the impressive architecture in the EU countries.  The 65-page brochure gives information on each structure and information about each country.   Marge took pictures only of the buildings we have seen like the Eifel Tower, Big Ben and Parliament, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, etc.  We could play the national anthem of each country while looking at their exhibit.  The moving trains, cranes, cars, and boats and even jumping porpoises were fun to watch.  We stood and felt the earthquake at the smoking Vesuvius, and watched a backhoe knock down part of the Berlin wall at the Brandenburg Gate in Munich.  There were 350 models and sites and we had a fun day enjoying the presentations.
Atomium	Washing the windows of the Atomium
Washing the windows of the Atomium - better they than I
This is what the Brussels Town Hall floral display is supposed to look like.	Brussels Town Hall floral display
Kinderdijk	Big Ben
Leaning Tower of Pisa	Bratislava - Blue Church
Parthenon	After two hours we stopped for a beer and lasagna before heading home to our hotel.  At the airport we printed our boarding passes for our 7:05 AM flight the next morning and shopped for one more breakfast and dinner of salads and cheese and crackers to be eaten with the bottle of Graf Artos sparkling wine we got from Grand Circle on the river cruise as Inner Circle members.  We didn’t want to carry it home.

Fri., 7/25/14 – Brussels to Frankfurt to Denver and Home
            Our flights were relatively uneventful and we were home by 7 PM.  It was a wonderful, educational, picturesque trip and we met several nice fellow travelers.