Brussels is a bit closed

Monday is not an entirely good day to be in Belgium...Belgium closes on Mondays. I'll skip all the places I tried to go to which weren't open.

This was the day I was due to move to a B & B (cos the hostel was full up). I decided to go out to the Atomium, and then walk across to the B & B. I got to Heysel, via the Metro, fairly easily. When I got there though, it was raining about as heavily as it can rain, so I hid in the station for a bit. The famous/tragic stadium was just across the way.

When it stopped a bit, I headed down to the Atomium. It has the quality that it's almost impossible to take a bad picture of it.

As you get closer, it's even possible to do some arty abstract pictures, and the sheer scale of it does get quite impressive. It was refurbished a couple of years back, so it looks especially bright and shiny now.

Inside, it's still fairly space age, and full of...small children, and cute cars! Well, only these few cars. If you can choose your moment to get in the lift to the top when the queue is less than 30 people, go for it! The stairs and escalators inside are atmospheric, and you get snatches of other spheres going up.

The views from the top are pretty good as well: the whole of Brussels is in view. This is the avenue leading down past the royal gardens (Belgium is obsessed with royalty, you'd think they weren't really a democracy yet), where I was going to walk, but it was wet and the queues made me late as well.

So, I took the metro to Rogier, nearer the area I was staying, and walked North for a mile or so to the B & B. The area turned out to be very Moroccan/Arabic, and it must be an excellent place to buy cheap clothes: prices start at 1 Euro, and 10 Euros is a fair way up the scale. I kind of wished I'd left everything at home and just bought on the spot.

The B & B was more a room in someone's house. It belonged to a lady called Nadine, who used to be in advertising or something but now made up market wedding videos. It was certainly an unusual place to stay: the house itself looked narrow and shabby form the outside, and dark and gloomy at first inside, but it soon became clear that it was at one time really high class. Massively high ceilings, (higher ceilings by far than the victorian house I live in) lovely stained glass windows downstairs, ornate plasterwork, lots of light and a sort of salon feel.

Also, a collection of cats and one lively dog. The whole place had a sort of run down/comfortably arty/alternative lifestyle feel. My bedroom had a low bed, a tv which only worked in black and white, huge piles of books, and decor consisting solely of female nudes, both prints of famous works and a large hand drawn piece. There was a very large bathroom, which suffered from a lack of light, ie they weren't any, apart from one little one over the mirror. It also suffered from a lack of soap, although on the other hand there were half a dozen bottles of perfume, so nobody left smelling bad.

On the whole, I liked it.

Anyway, it was early afternoon and the weather cleared, so I walked back to the centre, through a small botanical garden. It used to be a big garden, but the planners of Brussels kept chopping bits off, and chopped it in half with a road as well. You could tell from some of the signs that the park head was pretty pissed off. It was a bit sad: even the botanic collection had been moved somewhere else. It's a shame, because with a little work, it could be something astonishing.

Brussells' planners are not brilliant: the old bits of the city are great, but there are are too many concrete monoliths elsewhere.

The cathedral looks very impressive from the outside: very classic looking. On the inside though, it's just boring and very sterile, I was expecting better.

It does have this cool reliquary though, whcih still has a saints hand in. It's really unusually for even fake relics to survive these days, and I thought this was fascinating.

Back down the hill, near the Grand Place, I went into the clothing and lace museum. It's very quiet and calm, tucked away in a little back street, a nice change from the rest of Brussels.

Blimey, I didn't realise how much I stuffed into this day until I wrote it down...it's like a holiday all to itself.

Next, I did the thing that every visitor to brussels has to do (it's the law)- see the Mannekin Pis. The peeing guy. The comment everyone makes, is "is that it?". The only outstanding thing about it that it is peeing. It's tiny and not attractive otherwise, and a lot of people walk right past it (one of the museums has a video of people walking past it without noticing or saying "no, that can't be it").

It does wonders for the tourist shops, mind! You can't move for lace, chocolate and waffles.

I bought some lace edging for Wendy, then wandered sort of South-West from there.

Every other corner seems to have a stunning church, all of them better than the cathedral, but relatively ignored by tourists. Lots of shops as well; in the area I was in lots of comic shops, record shops and stuff. I ended up eating in a noodle bar close to Place St Catherine, and then wandered towards the Galeries St Hubert so I could see a film.

I found a huge shopping street (Nieuwstraat) on the way, and then an extremely mellow square hidden away, the Place De Martyrs. You can probably figure that name out! A great place just to sit and pass time, all grand but not overbearing white buildings, with a big memorial in the middle. I sat there until it started raining, then hurried to the cinema.

The cinema was excellent: very arthouse. I saw "A guide to recognising your saints", which I don't think has really hit the uk yet. It's very gritty in a lowlife American way, very gripping and in parts very sad. So engrossing and believable I wanted to shout at the screen at one point...I'd recommend it.

And that just leaves the bath episode. Got back to my room, filled the bath. no soap but luckily I had some liquid soap for the hostels. Little light but I moved the table lamps and sort of made do. So, I'm relaxing in the bath...I hear the bedroom door come open. Hmmmm. Burglars? Wind? Neither seemed likely. I got out, dripping wet, put a towel round my waist, carefully didn't electrocute myself on the lamp on the floor, and saw...a cat! A big fluffy tabby cat, which was more startled than I was, and ran under the bed.

I don't know what the best thing to do is in this situation. I jammed the door a couple of inches back open so the cat could get out, and got back in the bath.

When I got out, the cat had gone. It did come back later, introduced itself and marked me as its property. It seemed happy enough after that.

written by

martin_b on June 25, 2007 from Brussels, Belgium

from the travel blog: 10 days in Belgium

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