Brussels

Day 438 (September 9, 2019) – Brussels, Belgium

We flew to Brussels on Ryanair, which meant that we were flying not to the main Brussels Airport but to the Brussels South Charleroi Airport, which is used by most of the low-cost carriers. It’s kind of a stretch to include Brussels in the airport name as it’s about as close to Brussels as it is to France, but there was a bus service from the airport to downtown. An hour or so after boarding the bus we arrived in the center of Brussels where we found the subway and took the short ride out to the home of Lauren and Kyle (and their dog, Ellie). Lauren, Travis, and I all went to graduate school together, and Lauren and Kyle used to have a house in Philly not too far away from ours before moving across the pond to Brussels for work.

 

The Brussels Central Train Station.

We hadn’t seen each other in seemingly forever, so we had a lot of catching up to do. They took us out to dinner on our first night to a great little Belgian restaurant down the road. The menu was all in French, but Kyle used some of his French translation skills to help us out. I went for the duck, but others went for the burger. They also introduced us to Belgian beer, which was not anything like what we had been used to. We had been drinking a lot of pilsner from our time in Czechia and Belgian beer was pretty much the complete opposite. The flavors were so much more complex than a pilsner, and it grew on us. It was extremely flavorful, sweet, and had a very high alcohol content for a beer. Served in a goblet, it was more like drinking a fine wine than a beer.

On Saturday afternoon we took the subway downtown for the perfect Belgian trifecta: beer, fries, and waffles. We started out with a round of gyros from a Greek restaurant before going for a walk around town. It was interesting because we had been to Brussels before about six years ago and some of the streets felt familiar to us, although most didn’t. It was surprisingly cold out. Fall was in full swing in Brussels already. It may have felt like summer in Bratislava the day before, but that was long gone. The cold didn’t keep us outside for too long before we found ourselves at the famous Delirium Café where they have hundreds of Belgian beers on tap. I think it would take a dozen or so return trips to ever make it through their beer list. But despite the overwhelming list of options, we settled on some choices and sat around a wooden barrel table, enjoying our beers and catching up.

The alley leading to Delirium Cafe.

Some of the taps at Delirium Cafe.

After a couple rounds we were starting to get hungry again so Lauren and Kyle brought us to a nearby Belgian fry shop. There was a long line to order so we knew it had to be good. The fries came out scalding hot, but when they cooled enough to eat, I have to admit that they were pretty darn good. I’m not even much of a fries person and I thought they were tasty. Travis, on the other hand, is a fries connoisseur and he gave them a definite seal of approval, so that’s saying something.

Belgian fries!

We only had one last part of the trifecta to fulfill, so we walked through town towards the Manneken Pis statue. This famous fountain was just as underwhelming as I remembered it, but he was dressed up in a little set of sports attire for the occasion of International Fair Play Day. Across the street from the statue was a waffle shop where we got Belgian waffles topped with chocolate and whipped cream. I still don’t understand why they insist on serving these huge waffles with these minuscule plastic forks. I remember this from the last time we were in Brussels. The forks are too small and flimsy to work very well. More time is spent worrying that you're going to loose your waffle than actually eating it. It honestly would have been easier to eat with chopsticks than the little plastic fork. But despite the difficulties, they were still the best waffle we’d had in the longest time we could remember. 

The very underwhelming, but famous, Manneken Pis statue.

And Belgian waffles made our trifecta complete!

With our Belgian trifecta completed, we felt accomplished enough for the day and went back home. Although initially full of beer, fries, and waffles, we did eventually get hungry again for dinner. Lauren cooked up a delicious Belgian beef and beer stew for us. Just in case Belgian beer wasn’t good enough on its own, we also learned it makes for a very good cooking ingredient.

Ellie was ready for some dinner too.

After a lazy start to Sunday, we eventually got ourselves up and out of the house. The day before while we were walking downtown, we saw a beer festival right in Brussels’ main square, Grand Place, so we decided to head back downtown on Sunday to check it out. It was a lot of fun. We bought some drink tokens and walked around the beer tents trying to find all the cheapest beer samples. We tried everything that day: Belgian dubbels, tripels, quads, and who knows what else. The stemmed beer glasses also made the whole experience feel like a much fancier event than it really was. The sun was out and there was a group of guys going around playing instruments. I don’t know if I would go as far to call them a band… they seemed to be enjoying the beer just as much as their music. It was a great afternoon. Belgians really do know how to enjoy a good beer.  

The beer tents in Grand Place.

Feeling fancy at the Belgian beer festival.

Our original plan for Monday was to travel to Ghent or Bruges, but we were feeling way too lazy for that, so we decided to explore more of Brussels. We had a really early start. A little too early actually because we were hungry by the time we got downtown but nothing was open yet. Except for, of course, McDonald's. So of all things, we ate at McDonald's for breakfast. It was actually pretty good, but it also gave us some time to figure out what we wanted to see that day. We continued on through the main part of Old Town and walked around for a bit before heading into Starbucks for a coffee and to warm up. We split a pumpkin spice latte. It was the first pumpkin spice latte I'd ever ordered, but I was kind of disappointed by it. It was way too sweet for my tastes. So much for that. I don’t know what all the excitement about them is for. 

After getting our fill of American fast food we finally got a chance to do something Belgian. We visited the Magritte Museum, an art museum dedicated to the works of Rene Magritte, a Belgian surrealist artist. It was also just about the only museum open on a Monday in Brussels. I really enjoyed it though. I found the art to be whimsical, bizarre, and very entertaining.

 

Some of the art from the Magritte Museum.

Continuing our Brussels tour, we walked past the Royal Palace, stopped for a quick lunch at a cafeteria-like eatery packed with the lunch-time work crowd, then ended at the European Parliament buildings. We were in luck to find one more museum open that day, which was the somewhat recently opened House of European History. It was an interesting experience. There weren’t that many artifacts on display so they made up for it by giving everyone their own tablet and headphones. As you walked through the museum the tablet would detect which room you entered and prompt you to select which exhibits to learn more about. The museum was huge. We spent an hour there and only got through a couple floors. We wanted to head back and start making dinner, so we left before finishing the whole museum, but it would be worth a return trip to see the rest of the museum one day.

We swung past the grocery store on our way home to pick up ingredients to make chili for dinner. I’d made this recipe a hundred times. So outside of the usual struggle to find all the right ingredients in a foreign grocery store, everything seemed to be going well. The recipe called for something like five or six tablespoons of chili powder, which Lauren already had in the kitchen, so I tossed it in. Well, that was a mistake. I learned the hard way that European chili powder is not the same as American chili powder. European chili powder is actually spicy. Like really spicy. My mouth was on fire after tasting the chili. Panicked that no one was going to be able to eat it, we made a return trip to the grocery store to pick up more ingredients to dilute the whole pot. In the end, it all worked out. It was spicy but we managed. I was laughing through when Lauren told me she did the exact same thing shortly after moving to Brussels. Well, now we all know to watch out for that crazy hot European chili powder. 

Thanks for showing us a great time, Lauren and Kyle!