On our way back to London from our fabulous weekend in Bruges, we had a little over an hour between our regional train to Brussels and our Eurostar departure back to St Pancras International. Since neither of us had ever been to Brussels, we decided to make the most of our hour and head into the city for a quick look around.
We made this decision on the fly. After some quick Googling and mapping on our regional train, we hopped on the metro to the Grand-Place, the central market square of the city.
For some reason, I’ve come to imagine Brussels to be some dull, grey concrete jungle full of EU bureaucrats (must be those episodes of The Crown). At least from what we saw when we visited, this is certainly not the case. Grand-Place is absolutely beautiful. It was similar in detail and beauty to many buildings in Bruges, but on a greater scale.
I just wanted to keep spinning around to behold all of the beautiful buildings! The square is lined by such places as what used to be the town hall built in the 1400s, the Brussels City Museum and Starbucks.
The second result in Google for “sights in Brussels” is the Manneken Pis. Makes Brussels sound real exciting that a peeing boy statue fountain is a top sight… A short walk from the Grand-Place, we checked it out.
All the waffle and chocolate shops along the way have chocolate recreations in the windows which was pretty funny.
An hour was plenty of time to take the metro from Bruxelles-Midi into the city center for a quick look around. I’m glad we did it. Though we didn’t get to see much, it was definitely more fun than just sitting at the train station!
Jenn is an American expat living in London, spending her time freelancing, traveling and writing on this here blog. Thank you for reading. Are you planning a trip here? Tell me your plans in the comments!
