May 23, 2018

  Today the forecast was for rain 2 l /m²which on another website translated to about 3 mm of rain. The streets were wet when we woke up and still damp when we walked to Brussels Centrum for our day of sightseeing in historic old Brussels. The temperature was 14°C, the sky was cloudy and there was some wind.  We left the hats at the hotel and wore raincoats and rain pants over our shorts.  

   The walk to the Grand Market or Grande Place was just a few minutes longer than walking to the train station. The square is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The magnificent buildings surrounding the square, their gold leaf trim, sparkling when the sun shines, date from 1695 to the early 1700s. These buildings were the guildhalls for the trades and professions of the middle ages.  The king built a palace here, Maison Roi, just for entertaining the influential merchants and counts. The Bread Market had occupied that site for hundreds of years. It is the Belgium Museum today.  It was occupied by the Nazi staff when Belgium was invaded in 1939 until 1945.

   At 10 a.m. there were people everywhere and delivery trucks making the day’s deliveries to the many restaurants and cafés in the square and the adjacent narrow streets. The Jazz Festival starts in two days and a large stage was being erected in front of the gothic Belgium Museum, where all of the holiday costumes for the famous Mannekin-Pis or “Petit Julien” statue are on display. We found one of the waking tour guides for Sandeman Free Walking Tours and registered for the 11 o’clock walking tour that would be about 2.5 hours long.  At the end you pay the guide what you think s/he is worth – a suggested fee is €10 to €15 per person.

   Before the tour we walked around the nearby narrow streets and found the Church of St. Nicolas which has some of the original 13^thcentury building remaining, but has had several additions over the centuries including houses built against its walls which are now shops and cafés.

   The asymmetric Town Hall dates to 1402, it’s 96 meter Brabantine Gothic tower can be seen from the viewpoint by the Royal Palace which is over one km away in the Royale quartier.  The information center is in the building and it is still Brussels’ Town Hall.  The building has a paved courtyard in the center. It and all the buildings of the Grand Place were destroyed or badly damaged in August 1695 when French troops bombed  lower Brussels, that is why most of the buildings were built between 1697 and 1703. The Brussels name comes from the location on a reclaimed sandbank where a market was first established the sandbank between two streams was known as broek sella.  The name of Belgium comes from the ancient Bel guy tribe which settled in the area over 2,000 years ago.  Belgium as a country was only formed by a treaty after the Napoleonic wars in the early 1800s.

    The tour started with an explanation, by Peter from Liverpool, of the guildhouses surrounding the square.  On the houses to the left of Town Hall when facing it, is a house with a carved swan above the door.  This is where Carl Marx lived for two years.  Across the square is the house where Victor Hugo lived for a while.  He is the author of Les Miserables.

   Next, we followed the wider street on the side of Town Hall for a few streets to a small fountain at the intersection of rue de Chéne and rue des Grands-Carmes, which was surrounding by people taking pictures.  The statue was the famous Mannekin-Pis. In 15^thcentury Brussels this fountain & its peeing little boy statue were part of the drinking water system and a survivor of the 1695 French troops bombing of lower Brussels. 

  The streets radiating from the Grand Place are named for the businesses scattered on them, like chocolate street, bakers street and so on.  Over the centuries the statue has been stolen and replaced numerous times and so the original is no longer seen. On Beer Day, at the end of July, the water is changed to beer and Mannekin-Pis pees beer which is scooped up in beer mugs for a grand day.

   The Trappiste monks tradition said that the monastery had to be self sufficient. The monks made beer with an alcohol content of 9% and sold any excess but any profit was given to charity, so if you had a monk’s beer you were contributing to a charity. Each monastery had its own recipe and some recipes are still produced today.  Belgium has the most comic book authors and artists per capita in the world.  Famous Belgian comic characters are Tin Tin, Astrix and the Smurfs.  There is a Comic Book museum in Brussels.

  Belgium became independent in 1830. Today 55% of the citizens speak Flemish (a Dutch dialect) 43% speak French and 2% speak German. Brussels is bilingual Flemish and French. The language goes back to the time of the Germanic Celtic Bel guy tribe that was conquered by the Holy Roman Empire. Charlemagne later conquered the area and in its past parts of Belgium were ruled by the Spanish.  Napoléon conquered the region in 1795 and moved in the French aristocracy and their employees had to speak French.  The French were conquered at Waterloo just south of Brussels in 1815 and the country of Belgium was created as a neutral territory, ruled by the Netherlands. Belgium declared independence in 1830 creating a constitutional monarchy with Leopold 1 as the first King of theBelgian. 

     Next, the Stock Exchange building was abandoned 20 years ago when the Brussels and Amsterdam stock markets merged and moved to New York City.  It is built where there was an ancient butter market. Nearby is Fritesland, that have the best Belgian fries where they are double fried so notthe same as French fries. We passed the old Royal Theater before stopping for refreshment at Scott’s Pub.  They had a big selection of Belgian beers and served Aperol Spritz.  

   After the break we continued to Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Guluda’s which was first founded in 1255 and took over 300 hundred years to build. The two towers rise 69 meters high.  Fun Fact: The odd looking small statues at the edge of the roof are not gargoyles since they were not designed to spout water therefore, they are called grotesques.

    We moved onto Royal Park where the tour ended. 

    We returned to Grand Place and had waffles at Maison Dandoy tearoom nearby.  We had accumulated 10,366 steps for 7.71 km so far.

    We continued the day with a 25 minute walk to the European Parliament. We passed the Notre Dame des Victories au Sablon church, a 14^thcentury church, and took a look inside. The modern buildings of the European Union are impressive, with curved glass covering acres of space.  The European Union was originally founded in 1957 by six countries – Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium. Belgium was chosen as the capital since it is known as a neutral country and did not pose as a threat to the other countries.  Today there are 28 member states, including Britain for now.  The population of Brussels is 1.2 million; about 250,000 people work in the offices at the European Parliament and European Union. Brussels is the second most ethnically diverse city in the world.  Dubai is number 1 and Toronto, Canada is number 3.

    We took a different route back to the Royal Park and found the Belgium Parliament buildings at the opposite end of the park from the former Royal Palace. Then we were back at the hotel after seven hours registering 20,122 steps or 14.97 km

    We freshened up before going out to dinner and detoured to see the Botanic Gardens, built between 1826 and 1829 plus a few streets further to see the name of the church at the far end of rue Royal – Sint Maria Royale Roman Catholic church. We walked through the Botanic Gardens and at the pond saw black ducks swimming and turtles basking in the sun and gradually entered the Grand Place from a completely different direction than earlier in the day.  The clouds were getting darker and we looked for a restaurant but our directions were off and it was two streets further away than we looked. As the rain drops started we went into the Royal Galleries shopping precinct and dined at Le Marmiton where we chose Beef Stew with Belgian fries or Ghent style chicken stew.  We also had either Aperol Spritz or Belgian beer Jupiler. While outside there was a downpour complete with thunder and lightning for about 20 minutes.  We chatted with a young Dutch woman who was preparing a short presentation at a European Union conference the next day.  We bought some Belgian chocolates on our way out of the shopping precinct to enjoy later. When we got outside there was just a light rain which we needed the umbrellas for only part of the ten minute walk back to the hotel.

   We were frustrated by the Wi-Fi connection at the hotel.  It would fade out in the middle of an email and you would have to reboot later.

   Final distance 29,675 steps and 22.08 km