Brussels: Moules and Music

Hurtling along at 200km/h in the Eurostar, the Belgium countryside passed by with a blur. What I could see was similar to England with a flat checker-boarded landscape of fields disappearing into the horizon.

Arriving in Brussels it was obvious that it was really two cities in one. The Old Town is all about Art Nouveau facades, narrow lanes, pedestrian squares and throngs of tourists. The new part of the town is more like drab non-descript government buildings, wide boulevards, traffic and Eurocrats.

We spent much of the first day in the old town wandering in and out of cobble lines ‘rues’ (streets). As you would expect, there were shops full of chocolate in all shapes and sizes. Adelaide had great fun going into each shop asking for a free taste. The streets were full of buskers playing everything from the violin to 2 tin cans and crowds of people watching people sitting at tables watching people watch them. The music echoed across the square and mingled with the noise of guests dining and the clink of glasses of ‘Chimay’. It gave the place an exciting buzz that somehow managed to remain relaxed at the same time.

The centre of it all is the ‘Grand Place’. Like the major centrepiece of a table, the Grand Place is a bold statement of 15th and 17th Century baroque and gothic buildings surrounding an open square. The intricate stone calving adorning the buildings giving the place an almost surreal quality.

After an exhausting day we made a beeline for one of the many restaurants, each with tables spilling over into the narrow alleys, advertising ‘moules (mussels) in wine’, ‘moules in cream’ or ‘moules in something that I really didn’t want to know’, for exorbitant prices. And to finish it all of, waffles smothered in a thick layer of chocolate drowning a lone banana.

A wonder back to the hotel through the ‘Royales Galeries Sint-Hubert’, Europe's oldest glass arcade opened in 1847. This iron and glass arcade reminded us of the Strand with expensive boutiques selling fabulous jewellery, lace, hats and bags as well as trendy cafes.

With the thought of looking at more chocolate overpowering, even for me, it was time to call it a night.