“Je vais te tuer!“

I couldn’t hear much of what was being said in the street four stories below us, but I heard that loud and clear.

The woman hustled up the street–hurriedly making a call on her cell phone–away from the man who’d uttered those words, and away from the Mercedes S-class she’d just smashed up. She hadn’t been able to shatter the windshield, as much as she’d tried.

All in all, the guy seemed to handle it pretty calmly. Shortly, the police showed up, and I guess handled things, though it was up the street where we couldn’t see or hear.

Welcome to Brussels!

La Grand-Place

We had just gotten settled in our apartment when that altercation broke out in the street below. Our neighborhood was actually quite lovely, with a large amount of ethnic and religious diversity. Naturally, it was well connected by subway, but it was also only a 30-minute walk from the city center.

That first evening, though, there would be no walking. We were too tired to deal with going out and finding food. So we used Uber Eats and had the food come to us. How did people take year-long trips around the world before the internet?!

The next day, we took that easy 30-minute walk into the city. Winding through the streets of the west side of Brussels, the city felt huge, real, and a bit grungy, really. Grungier than any European city we’d visited, easily.

At the end of our casual meandering was the opposite of grungy. It was the gleaming, iconic center of Brussels: La Grand-Place.

Surrounded by beautiful buildings glittering in their gold decoration, Brussels’ Grand Square is rightfully considered one of the most beautiful public squares in Europe. Most of these buildings are the guildhalls of the once unfathomably rich guilds of the city. However, the most iconic building may be the Town Hall.

We spent some time walking the surrounding streets as well, including over to the other famous Brussels attraction: the Manneken Pis.

That’s… a statue of a boy taking a piss. That’s one of the most famous attractions in the city? So we’re done then, right? There’s nothing left to see.

I haven’t really gotten a good answer for why it’s famous. But they love it. Throughout the year, they dress the statue up in different costumes, for holidays and festivals and such. Brussels is weird.

Walking Tour

It had been a while since we’d done a walking tour. But we wanted to in Brussels, so we turned to our good friends at Sandemans for one of their free tours.

We got a great one this time. Our guide was charming, funny, and full of energy. He took us through a lot of the same areas surrounding the Grand Place that we’d already walked through, but he talked about them!

Our guide was also, fortunately, a beer guy, which is nice since Belgium is a beer country. He pointed out a huge beer package store, decked out with a massive variety of Belgian beer. Also, he pointed out a few quiet neighborhood bars, good for a drink. But he also reminded me that the Moeder Lambic is in Brussels–very much not a quiet neighborhood bar, but a very famous beer place indeed. We would visit for a drink before our train on the day we left town.

One of the recognizable landmarks of Brussels is the street art scattered throughout the city. These aren’t simply graffiti covered walls, but huge murals depicting the famous comic-book characters of Belgium. These include a comic called The Smurfs. You may have heard of it.

Our tour wound through the city center and finished up at the beautiful park at the Mont des Arts, which gives some lovely views of the center city. We got some restaurant suggestions from our guide, importantly including a good place for mussels–something we very much wanted while in town. Armed with our recommendation, we headed across town for dinner!

La Belle Maraîchère

The mussels were great, as was the beer on offer. But the fun part was the conversation with a woman at the restaurant.

She was on our walking tour too, and took the same dinner recommendation. She was a flight attendant for Delta, and was taking advantage of a day off between flights to and from New York, with a whirlwind tour of Brussels.

But the most interesting part was she said she was one of the attendants on that crazy Delta flight that was the last flight out of Puerto Rico before Hurricane Irma hit. They raced in from New York, turned around as quickly as possible with the last load of passengers escaping the storm, and raced out as the hurricane was coming in. Badass!

What’s Next?

And that was pretty much it. As I mentioned, we had a little bit of time the day we left, which we used to visit Moeder Lambic and another bar nearby, but that was it. A pretty casual, uneventful trip to Brussels, on our rapid-fire tour of Europe.

With our short time in Brussels over, it was time to get on the Eurosta–what was that? Yeah I know I didn’t talk about the… you… you want me to tell them about the other day in town? I don’t know, do you really think they wanna… sigh, alright, I’ll tell ’em.

A Day in Grimbergen

Truth is, we had one other day in Brussels, and we used it to take the bus out to the suburb of Grimbergen for the day. If you’re a beer person, you may recognize that name, as it’s the name of a famous and widely available brand of abbey beers, which was originally brewed in the town of Grimbergen. But we didn’t go out there for beer.

Belgium is also famous for spas. They love that shit. The town of Spa–where the term comes from–is even in Belgium. And, there are a number of well regarded ones in and around Brussels. Somewhere along the way, we got the idea to go to one. I don’t even remember how or when we started talking about it. But we didn’t want to just go to a spa, we wanted to go the way Belgians would. It was a cultural experience, you see.

So we went to a naked spa.

What possessed us to do that?! I don’t know! It was an experience, I’ll tell you that. They have saunas, steam rooms, relaxation rooms, cold water baths, a (very) natural lake to swim in, sunbathing areas, and an outdoor swimming pool. All naked.

It was weird, and maybe not the best environment for 12-year olds like us. But it’s weird, too, how normal it came to feel. Young people, old people, middle aged people, it attracted all types. And then us weird foreigners, on holiday.

We had a great time, really. Afterward, we had a fantastic dinner at a nearby restaurant–clothes on, of course–before taking the bus back to our place in Brussels.

It was a fascinating experience, and I’m glad we tried it.

What’s Next?

With our short time in Brussels over, it was time to get on the Eurostar train and blast through the Chunnel to our next stop in London! But once we got there, we wouldn’t be traveling alone for a little while–we had a very special guest coming to travel with us for a couple weeks. Come back next time to find out who that guest was, and read about our time in London!