After spending five nights in Dublin – a long stretch at any one hostel that brought about many odd looks from the receptionists – I hopped on an early morning plane to Brussels, Belgium.
Brussels was never really on my radar as a tourist, and you can tell from the city itself that most European travelers skip over the lovely, small city. However, it was a nice place to end a week full of the bustle of travel, and I even got to tour it with a friend! That’s right, Emilie and I have met up once again – making the Rockbrook Camp reunion in three different countries now.
I went into the weekend expecting Brussels to be on the German speaking side of Belgium (here you can see how little research I did on the area beforehand, compared to the other cities I’ve visited). You can imagine my surprise when a McDonald’s cashier started talking at me in French – which despite having taken it for a quarter of the school year in fifth grade, I could not understand.
Emilie and I met at a small cafe and then – like the rest of the weekend – walked around. Some of the “highlight sites” of Brussels include the Atomium – a huge statue dedicated to the Belgian splitting of the atom – several parks, the royal palace, Grand-Platz (the main square that reminded me a lot of Frankfurt-am-Main), and Menneken-Pis. The last of which is the famous statue of a small boy peeing into the fountain below. He was dressed as either a naval officer or baseball player when we visited.
I really did love the forest, and we took the opportunity to take some nice fall photos.
One of the most important experiences to have in Brussels is getting a waffle, which we did the morning before I left. It did not disappoint.
Compared to my other blog posts, I feel like I don’t have much more to say. As Brussels is not very touristy, travelers may begin to feel bored with the area after just a night or two, and after leaving Dublin with things I still wanted to do, I left wondering “was that really it?” But there are very few cities I would feel comfortable living in, and I do think Brussels is one of them. Without the pressure of the fast pace of London, plenty of museums and beautiful architecture – not to mention lovely countryside I did not get to visit – I can Brussels as being a fine, easy city to settle down in.
Mary M. McConnaha 