Brussels is open again! Music, pictures, nuns and stuff

Had a nice continental breakfast with the daughter of the room owner, then set off to see some museums. Most of them are up the top of the hill, next to the Palace. Well, a palace, Belgium has several. I got soaking wet, not the best of days. I started off at the music museum in the Old England building. Here it is again as a reminder...

It's a reasonably well restored building, and apparently took a lot of rebuilding, reconstructing some of the original details. Sadly, the light levels inside don't work too well with my camera: they seem to be kept low to protect the instruments.

But the real star is the museum itself. There are probably 4 floors of different displays and historical instruments, and you get given a set of headphones. As you go round and stand in front of the displays, the headphones play music of the instruments you are looking at.

It's really an amazing place and I spent hours in there. I've never heard music like it before, and they seem to have a truly comprehensive and definitely fascinating collection.
The only room which is light is one in an adjacent linked building, which has some very curious compound instruments.

This place even has the best cup of tea in Brussels as well, in a nice restaurant on the top floor. They don't serve it with milk...and it's so nice you don't need it at all. I suspect from the crowds coming in for lunch that it may serve rather nice food too.

Most of the rest of the daytime was spent in the huge are gallery that's up with the palace. It's spread across 3 buildings, all linked together, and it would have been even bigger but some of it was closed to make a Margritte Museum.
A truly amazing collection, both old art and modern art, and lots of stuff by James Ensor. Ensor was a very odd man who started off drawing perhaps like Walter Sickert or Whistler, and ended up drawing quite quite mad comic art.

After that, it was pretty much time for tea. I walked in the direction of the People's Palace, and found the church of Our Lady (Sablon).

The bit I could see was dramatic, it's an excellent building, but unfortunately half the church was behind boards for some sort of renovation. However, I did meet a very nice elderly nun, who only spoke French but had a nice smile. She was very pleased that I'd asked her whether photos were allowed, which they were. I've never been thanked by a nun before.

After that I found a very nice area with lots of antique shops and bookshops and even stamp dealers (the Belgians do that sort of thing still). I had some mezze in a Lebanese cafe, and saw Brueghel's house in passing.

This was in the church at Kappellemarkt. They had a very different take on death in those days. guess it was just something you had to live with, not try to ignore as we do.

No cats at the B & B tonight.

written by

martin_b on June 26, 2007 from Brussels, Belgium

from the travel blog: 10 days in Belgium

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