© Richard Randall

Caribbean

Sundries

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Oceania

BRUSSELS

We spent an enjoyable weekend in Belgium sampling lots of the delicious beers. We departed from London Waterloo on the Eurostar, and arrived in Brussels 2 hours 40 minutes later. We had not travelled on the Eurostar before but had wanted to do so for some time, and as it was close to the time of my birthday we had a good reason to try the Eurostar. The journey was excellent we were very impressed, and we would definitely travel on it again. Before we knew it we had arrived, we left the station in Brussels and took a taxi to our hotel (cannot remember the name of it though), which was in an excellent central location. The hotel was nothing grand, and I remember the room was quite small, but as we planned to spend most of our time out and about we didn't care. As soon as we had dumped our belongings in the room we went out, walking to the centre of town, about 5 minutes along the road. One of the first places we stopped for a drink was the Cafe Metropole at the Hotel Metropole in the Grand Place area. The hotel itself is from the late nineteenth century, and the interior was very ornate with marble and gilt everywhere. We sat in the Cafe/Bar which has comfortable leather seating, a marble fireplace and excellent service. The bar menu has an amazing six pages, plus some particularly tasty sounding specialities from the head barman, although we were not tempted this time, we ordered a bottle of champagne to start my birthday celebrations. There would be plenty of opportunities to sample the beers later, as Brussels has more than enough bars and cafes to keep the thirtiest of customers happy. After this first port of call we headed to the Grand Place, an old market square surrounded on all four sides by magnificent architecture of large, beautiful, ornate buildings, most of which are in the Italian Baroque style brought to the area by Pieter Paul Rubens. Some of the older buildings date from as early as 1365, but the majority of them were rebuilt in 1697 after the French blew the place to bits. The bars and cafes that seemed to dominate this square, with their large outside seating areas, were obviously very popular with tourists and a great place to relax and watch everybody going about their business. One of these was La Chaloupe D'or, designed by the architect D.Bruyn in 1697 for the guild of tailors. On top of the building was a statue of Bishop Saint- Bonifacius the patron saint of tailors. Leading off of Grand Place are lots of cobbled streets which were full of very busy restaurants lining both sides of the street, most of the customers were eating outside even though it was winter, seafood being the most popular. Belgium is probably most famous for beer, and rightly so. Wandering round the side streets we saw lots of lovely chocolate, and smelt the waffles covered in hot chocolate sauce and in the autumn you can enjoy the pheasants and delicious truffles. There were lots of shopping opportunities too, but we were not there to shop, we were there because the cafes and bars never close and we had lots of different beers to sample! A nice touch in Brussels (which we get here in France too) was that when you order a beer it always came served in the correct glass, don't know why but I am sure it made it taste even nicer! I personally prefer the fruit beers whilst Richard liked the darker brews. One of the main tourist attractions has got to be the Manneken pis which always attracts large crowds. We had both seen it before when we were children but we thought no visit to Brussels would be complete without another look. Apparently centuries ago a great fire took hold and began to destroy the city, and a story of a little boy was born. So if you are sitting comfortably I will begin ... Seeing this devastating fire the little boy dropped his pants and began to piss on the fire to keep it from destroying the city. Legend has it that his contribution was enough to keep the fire from destroying the beloved city hall. So to commemerate this little boy an unknown sculptor created a fountain. The Manneken Pis attracts visitors from all over the world, many of whom bring little costumes with them for him to wear, and he is changed every day. One of his outfits, possibly his first, was donated by the Governor General of the Netherlands; Maximilian Emmanuel in 1698. The earliest record of a 'pee' statue is a document dated 1377. The statue that exists today is a replica of the one made by Jerome Duquesnoy in 1619. The original statue was apparently taken away by the French soldiers in 1747. It is said that King Louis XV donated an outfit that was made using gold embroidery to apologise for the cultural slight. There is a museum nearby where all of the Manneken Pis outfits are exhibited . So without the sacrifices made by that little peeing boy, the Manneken Pis would not be ... then again it could all be a myth! The weekend passed very quickly and before we knew it we were boarding the train for Waterloo. We both had a great time in Brussels and enjoyed the beers and I am sure we will visit again before too long.