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Dec

28

Brussels Travel Guide

Filed Under Belgium

A trip to Brussels
With wonderful sights, good beer and yummy chocolate, it is difficult to resist what Brussels has on offer. Leaving Brussels International Airport tourists soon discover a charming city, oozing cosmopolitan vibes and remarkable architecture. Food connoisseurs will pleased to learn that the city apparently the most restaurants in the world per capita, and the city’s market squares are bustling with a wide range of local food and goods.

Flights to Brussels
You can arrive at either Brussels International Airport or Charleroi Brussels South Airport. The latter serves only a limited number of flights. Both airports offer convenient connections to the city centre by taxi and bus. Those coming from London, Paris, Amsterdam and Cologne can hop on the Eurostar to Brussels.

Brussels is quite small and is ideal for exploration on foot. However, you can always opt to take a bus, with routes operating throughout the city. Taxis can be flagged down on the street but tend to be on the pricey side.

Sightseeing in Brussels
Consisting of two areas known as the Lower and Upper towns, Brussels boasts a fantastic balance of impressive architecture, hardcore shopping venues and hip cafés. The Lower Town is home to the beautiful Grand Palace and an outstanding statue of St Michel. Around the town are many lovely sidewalk cafés which are great for people watching. Don’t forget to check out the renowned Manneken Pis on the corner of Stoofstraat and rue de L’Etuve and be amazed at how small the statue actually is. The Upper Town is ideal for those into upmarket shopping. There are, however, some cultural attractions including the Royal Museum of Fine Arts and the magnificent Belgian Parliament Building.

Fun by night – eating, drinking and partying
Don’t be surprised if you feel a bit giddy after a meal as many of Brussels’ notable dishes are beer-based. Try lapin à la gueuze (rabbit cooked in beer) and Flemish carbonades or non-alcohol dishes like stoemp (meats cooked in a potato, carrot and onion sauce). Mouthwatering Belgian chocolate makes an irresistible dessert, as do Belgian waffles.

It’s all about beer in Belgium. All bars, pubs and clubs serve local beer, some developed by Trappist monks in centuries past. Many clubs are open until early morning, while Art Nouveau cafés are famous among locals, offering an extensive list of yummy cocktails.

Fun by day - shopping and activities
Shopping is a blissful experience in Brussels as there are countless boutiques and shops dotting the city’s wide boulevards. For more serious shopping, avenue Louise and avenue de la Toison d’Or guarantee to please all fashion-aficionados with their designer apparel. Local markets are aplenty in Brussels, featuring flowers and antique goodies, while bird markets are interesting for their variety of colourful feathered creatures. Once in Brussels, you can buy a mammoth amount of chocolate to bring home or to gobble down on the trip. You can even get a chocolate in a shape of the famous Manneken Pis for your friends back home.

Daytrips
Although Amsterdam is only a swift train ride away from Brussels, several interesting daytrip options exist within Belgium itself. Bruges is a beautiful, medieval city sectioned by canals providing a wealth of 13th century buildings. Despite the unavoidable crowds during high season, Bruges is more than worth a day’s exploration.

In the south of Belgium, the Ardennes is a region of rustic towns, gentle rivers, quiet valleys and expansive forests situated in the hilliest part of the country. Namur Town is the usual cast-off point for visitors deciding to delve into the region, with an easy border crossing into Luxembourg a distinct possibility.

Must-see attractions
An excellent city for walking, Brussels is composed of Upper Town and Lower Town with the boundary between the two occupied by Grand-Place, the starting point for most visitors and the hub of the city’s activities. Constantly energetic, the majestic square rests encompassed by 18th century guild houses and the forbidding Hotel de Ville. It is the city’s centre from which the streets of Brussels extend towards all parts of both sections of the city.

Lower Town comprises the heart of the city, commercial as well as cultural, and caters to the majority of visitors, being more affordable than the wealthy sector of Upper Town. An abundance of sidewalk cafés and shopping opportunities liven the streets of Lower Town in addition to Grand Palace, a statue of Saint Michel and the famously tiny Manneken Pis.

Upper Town contains a few must-see attractions, namely the Parliament Building and the Royal Museum of Fine Arts. Considered to be the most affluent area of the city, where much seems to be of a quality fit for royalty, Upper Town is home to upmarket shopping and speciality boutiques. In both Upper Town and Lower Town, the items for which Belgium is known; chocolate, waffles and a variety of foods cooked in beer, can be found.

Celebrating its 50th birthday in 2008, the Atomium remains one of Belgium’s most visited attractions. Standing 102 metres tall, the shining steel monument of modern architecture, originally designed for Expo ‘58, represents one cell of an iron crystal magnified 165 billion times.

Best time to go
Claiming a maritime temperate climate, Belgian weather is horribly inconsistent. Brussels seldom sees the mercury fall below 0°C, but the summers are rarely hotter than 23°C (70°F). The peak travel season is between April and September with the warmest months being July and August.

The least popular time to visit has always been the winter months of November through March. Brussels experiences approximately 200 days a year of precipitation, with a monthly average of 3cm to 6cm, in the form of rain or snow depending upon the season.

Rainy day suggestions
World renowned for its beer, little effort is required in considering indoor possibilities when the weather turns poor. Trappist beers are very popular, brewed by monks according to centuries-old traditions, with all bars, pubs, clubs and restaurants serving both local and speciality brews.

If you would rather stay sober, Brussels has a wealth of first-class museums to keep you busy. The Royal Museum of Art and History and the Royal Museum of Fine Arts are two of the best and most visited.

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