Brussels: Heatwaves in One of the World's Beauties

Day 1: Arrival

The heat was picking up and the train to Brussels was pretty straightforward. Once we got to the train station, we were to walk down a quick street, a straight shot to the tram line, route 93, that would take us easily to a stop just minutes away from our new hotel, and the first trip to Belgium for Corrie and me.

So, simple walk, easy peasy, just look at the phone. It turned out to be entirely uphill, and steep for being a third of a mile. At the top of the hill was the church, which was easily seen just down from our tram stop:

In the hotel, which we chose because they were great with kids, right away greeted us with swings in the lobby:

Sported very nifty wallpaper:

And upholstery:

And had cool built in bunkbeds.

Of course the kids fought over them, an argument that had to be settled with coinflips.

The first day we arrived, we went exploring to try one of the further afield activities, the Atomium:

I had never heard of this attraction, but it has been a symbol of Brussels since the 1958 World's Fair they hosted. From the top had some nice views:

And aftyer Corrie and Camille went elsewhere, Cass and I followed some of the interior paths and went up and down some of the connector tubes:

And into various other spheres to see attractions. Outside there were sculptures, one reminded me of one at our local MOLAA:

Camille had desperately wanted to find a playground, and from the top of the Atomium we spotted what looked like a climbing structure. Once we were all done, we went to check it out.

It turned out to not be a climbing structure, rather it was the entrance to the Design Museum. Since we bought tickets to the Atomium, we had entrance to the design museum as well, and they had some semblance of cool air inside, so we went and walked around for a while inside.

There was some cool, fancy designed things for kids, like a rocking horse:

Or...rando living quarters:

Or many other types of chairs and other high design items. It was weird, and fun, and we probably wouldn't have visited had we not already bought entrance inadvertantly.

But, our first, sweaty day in Brussels was in the bag, and we planned out how to proceed with the few days we had. 

Day 2: Exploring

This turned out to be the Long Day. Ho boy.

So we started walking after we got off our tram. We were going to the Royal Museum of Fine Arts for Belgium.

Brussels has a bunch of cool city-vistas also, but they're on a different scale than smaller places like Aachen. But, like, check out a city mansion, maybe:

There was a large abbey across from the front entrance to a wealthy merchant that's now a public park and garden:

I took the follwoing picture because it cracked me up at first. I thought it was a sign telling people not to get too close to the grass, like No Sniffing the Grass, and I thought that the silhouette was a little pudgy.  

After I realized that it was a shoe, and a No Trampling the Grass sign, and I told the kids, we all had a good laugh about it.

The lobby, if you want to call it that, of the Royal Museum was a large and rather spectacular spot, with the main collection at the end of the hall.

Right in the lobby was a new sculpture, Hands-Man, as his body and face were made of, er, hands:

Whoa

The scale of some of these works of art is always hard to wrap your head around when looking in books or at your Dauily Art app on your phone (just me?), so here are some folks to compare with:

Here's Jaucque-Louis David's "The Death of Marat," one of a handful of paintings (out of thousands) that i recognized from the museum:

There was an added exhibit, a traveling Magritte exhibition, as he was a Belgian Surrealist (the guy in the bowler with an apple in front of his face is his most famous work).

There were plenty of works I hadn't seen of his, and many that I did know of were not in this exibition. Here's one where he uses the silhouette for artistic purposes:

We walked from the Royal Museum to the main square, where the guild houses were stationed, as well as the royal government house and one of the main churches:

This is the kind of thing you find in Paris and Vienna: enormous cobblestoned paved public squares ringed by huge palaces, cathedrals, and, here, guild-houses.

On the walk from there we headed to the comic-strip museum. Corrie was going to peel off from us and head to the Art Nouveau Museum, an art movement that emphasized organic shapes and realistic materials---wood, metal and the like. But the day got away from us, and Corrie was going to go by herself as we visited the Comic Strip spot. But it would have to wait.

Along the walk was a covered mall of sorts:

And some weird/cool buildings:

But, as it turned out, the Comic Strip museum was housed in a Victor Horta building, an old warehouse that was converted into an early department store, and Victor Horta was the face of Art Nouveau, and his house and studio is what constitutes the museum. Anyway, here was a picture of some details inside:

All other pictures could have been us, weary, drenched with sweat, struggling through the museum. We were suggested to start on the top floor, which was the hottest. "It...is not good to end with the top floor."

Lots of Herge stuff, and I learned how rich the Belgian comic strip and book industry was. We bought an English Tin-Tin book.

It was hot, and water consumption is not on par with what we're used to. So, public water is nonexistent, and even restaurants don't give you free water. The heatwave had fully set in, and each day going out to walk for, eh, an entire day, would see me carrying four big bottles of bathroom-filled water bottles, and everyone sweaty and damp looking.

Day 3: Parks and Art Nouveau

After the ten miles of walking in the staggering heat the day before, we decided to find a park, let the kids play, and work out some laundry issues. 

I followed some directions on my Google Maps for a park, but was confused by th eentrance:

That's not a storefront, it's a path through erstwhile stable houses into a public green space:

That transported you to a different time. It was nice, but maybe for a smaller age group, and soon the kids were done.

Before we hiked to a different park, I wanted to check an intersection I found on my phone. First, had to pass the Roosenboom:

Maison Roosenboom

This is what I saw on my phone, close enough to swing by, and weird enough for me to want to go see:

Here's one of the buildings:

The park we headed to was a little better for the kids.

Afterwards we had lunch, Corrie took off to go do her thing---the Victor Horta Museum/Studio---and eventually the kids joined me to do laundry.

Iconic Horta designed hotel

The next day we left for Antwerp, and while we waited at the train station, I snapped a picture of my sweat condition:

And I'm not sure if that picture will come out, but I was dripping with sweat, like, all the time, and by this time, eating a croissant and drinking a cup of coffee in the train station, my shirt soaked through with sweat, and my arms looked like I got out of a pool.

Gross, but part of the daily routine on this half of the trip.

Brussels Thoughts

Holy hell! Brussels is like Paris. Full stop. Brussels is beautiful, bustling, internationally minded, full of foreigners, especially as the capitol of the EU, and while everything is expensive, it's also very French. The television that we watched the World Cup games on in the hotel's lounge was all in French, even while Belgium is an uneasy truce between the French of Wallonia and the Dutch of Flanders.

Twenty-one years ago, people referred to Prague as the Paris of the east. I didn't get that. If anything, it could be Slavic Paris.

The only cities that felt like they were on the same level with the real Paris would be Vienna---the German Paris---and Brussels, in what felt like an angry Dutch/German/Frenchified Paris. Berlin, Rome, Amsterdam, Copenhagen...these are all their own things, while Paris, Vienna, and Brussels are on different planes.