Brussels

Hello from the land of the praline, my one true love.

We landed in Brussels yesterday, early in the morning, and after dropping our bags off at the hotel, we headed towards Grand-Place to start exploring. Grand-Place was amazing, lined with these beautiful buildings, all decked out in gold, glittering in the sun, which we now know are all the guild halls. The town hall - still used as the town hall today - was on one side with its asymmetrical features while the gothic building with its perfect symmetry mocked it from across the square. We wandered around for a few minutes before deciding to take the Sandeman’s city walking tour with Tom. Despite sounding like he was from a cornfield in Nebraska (his description, not ours) Tom was an excellent guide and took us around the city, telling us some pretty tall tales (and now I understand where my love of making up ridiculous explanations comes from…) We got to see lots of things we hadn’t planned on visiting - like Manneken Pis - and had a delicious hot chocolate halfway through the tour, too!

Then it was on to some museums. We originally planned on doing the Musée Oldmasters yesterday and Musée Magritte today. Turns out, they are in the same building and right by where our tour ended. So we did both of them, along with the Musée Fin-de-Siècle. We saw some amazing works by Rubens and Bruegel - and of course, Magritte. All three museums were a great way to spend a few hours and we were happy we were able to see them, since the Oldmasters isn’t open on Mondays.

Then, it was time for a late lunch - fries! We headed to a place mentioned on the walking tour, Café Georgette, getting two cornets of frites. DELCIOUS! Beef fat really does make the fry. Once full, we headed back to the hotel for a shower, a nap, and a rest before dinner. Dinner wasn’t far from the hotel, EDP got a steak with mushroom sauce and I went for the cheese croquettes. Very cheesy. Followed by a very chocolatey mousse. These Belgians do not mess around when it comes to their chocolate, let me tell you.

Today was one of our most important days in Belgium - chocolate tour day. Because we had already visited the museum that was on the itinerary for this morning, we spent some time finding something else to do before our 3:30 tour. You’d think it wouldn’t be that hard but not much is open on a Monday in Brussels. We finally settled on visiting Mini-Europe, an “amusement park” of Europe’s most famous sites & buildings at 1/25th scale. I was a begrudging participant, at best, particularly since it was outdoors and it was raining. But we really couldn’t find anything else that suited our interest so off to the metro we went, stopping for breakfast on the way. We were soon at Mini-Europe’s door and after forking over what I felt was a completely ridiculous amount of money, we headed in. We saw a rather boring mini-EU parliament building and then the skies opened and it POURED. We took refuge in a gazebo until the worst of it was over before venturing backing out and into the main area. Which I promptly became completely enamoured by, given the cheekiness of the designers. Many of the displays had animations (like a naked woman emerging from a sauna and jumping into the water) or amusing components, like a car crash or a Brexit protest. I found these hilarious and Mini-Europe suddenly became worth every Euro we spent. It was also surprisingly fun to guess what things were before seeing the signs and to add a couple of places to visit to the never-ending list. I will say, though, the gift shop was an incredible disappointment.

Then, we headed back to Grand-Place for a light lunch (wine, cheese and meats) before the chocolate tour - also with Sandemans. Which was fantastic. Our guide, Charlotte, knew a lot about chocolate, telling us about how the Belgian praline was invented - by a guy named Jean Neuhaus who had an ah-ha moment when the medicines he lightly coated in chocolate in his apothecary shop proved a little too popular. He started focusing on chocolates and eventually invented the filled chocolate. His wife invented the box you get chocolates in (the ballotin) when the chocolates were getting crushed in the little bags they came in. Figures a woman had to be the one to say “yo, dude - just put them in a box!” Neuhaus was our first stop where we got to try a vanilla or raspberry praline. Delicious! We also visited Mary’s, the first lady chocolatier, who also was the first to start decorating her ballotin. Her designs are still used today, though are mass-produced instead of hand-painted. All the chocolates are still hand-made, though, which is why you can only get Mary’s chocolates in her shops, not on every corner you see. At Mary’s, we also learned about why white chocolate is still chocolate and got to try a ruby truffle. Our third stop was Corné Port-Royal, started by a fellow whose family thought he was nuts for opening a chocolate shop, until he was wildly successful and then they opened shops with the family name, too, hence the Port-Royal part of the name that Corné tacked on the end to distinguish his shops. There, I had a salted caramel chocolate (delish!) and EDP had a dark chocolate with ganache. Then, it was next door to Galler, where we had a very dark chocolate, which wasn’t as bitter as Charlotte made it sound like it would be. We ended our tour at Frederic Blondeel where EDP had a laurel praline and a rum praline and I had a passion fruit praline and a cinnamon praline. The laurel was a delightful surprise and the cinnamon was wonderful.

When the tour was done, we swung back around to the shops I didn’t get a chance to make a purchase at during the tour - yes, I have now acquired something from every shop. We won’t get into how much - especially since there’s a chocolate shop that Charlotte told us is the best in Belgium that wasn’t on the tour. It has a store in Antwerp so I’m going to try to get it it tomorrow. Anyway. I have a lot of chocolate now. Let’s just say I spent more than I should have but less than you’d expect.

We finished off our day at a little pub around the corner from the hotel with some ciders and a burger for me and meatballs for EDP. Now, we’re packing up for an early start tomorrow. We’re heading to the airport to pick up our car and drive up to Antwerp, where we have a PACKED day ahead of us. Good thing I bought some chocolates to keep us sustained!