Sunday report

I took the tram to meet Cleo in the late morning on Sunday. If she hadn’t said her neighborhood -- Le Sablon -- was very touristy, I would have thought that the crowds of people in the streets and stores and cafés were just local people having their usual Sunday morning of shopping and café-sitting. Apparently there was a lot of that going on too, but this is a neighborhood where there are lots of things to attract visitors.

There are art galleries, many of them specializing in African art. There are gorgeous chocolate shops. There are restaurant/cafés where, unlike at home, no one minds if you sit there for hours, reading your Sunday paper, drinking coffee or tea or wine, nibbling on pastries, and enjoying the spectacle that surrounds you. There’s not much tipping here, so presumably the waitstaff get paid by the hour, which means they don’t have any reason to hurry you along. How the cafés themselves make a profit I don’t know. I’ve lost track of the exchange rate, so I’m not thinking very precisely about what meals are costing, but my general impression is that though eating out may be more expensive than at home, it’s nothing like what Maddy and I saw in London this summer.

We chose an outdoor table at one of the cafés. We were just in time; after we sat down, the place got crowded quickly. It was too late for breakfast, so we both had salads. Mine had bits of some kind of ham, plus a chunk of warmed goat cheese wrapped in bacon, besides lots of yummy greens. It was delicious. We sat and chatted for a couple of hours, then went for a long, long walk to see some of the major sights of Brussels.

The main item on the list was the Grand Place, which is a huge, central square enclosed by grand buildings on all sides. At ground level there are shops, art exhibits, cafes, and lots and lots and lots of people. On one side is the “Hotel de Ville” -- city hall. We didn’t go inside any of the buildings, we just strolled around, and I took pictures.

Surrounding the Grand Place is a maze of big and little streets. Some of them are lined with restaurants, which were open and crowded, inside and out. Some are lined with stores (like clothing stores), most of which were closed on Sunday. We went into 3 or 4 chocolate shops in Le Sablon, but I saved my buying til later in the trip. The choices are overwhelming. All the chocolates look like perfect jewels and are arrayed in the stores as much for the beauty and style of the presentation as for the chocolate itself. Or maybe it’s that the chocolate is so good, it requires exquisite presentation. ;)

The other major building we saw was the Bourse, the stock exchange building. It was in the financial district, but that wasn’t very lively on a Sunday afternoon. If I remember correctly, it’s across the street from the only McDonald’s I saw. There’s some kind of twisted appropriateness in that, isn’t there?


One of my guidebooks says that Brussels doesn’t have a lot of famous sights to see, you come here more for the ambience. Since I haven’t made much effort to seek out museums or special places, I would have to say that’s been true for me. It’s fun to be in a place where there are people from all over and many languages being spoken, and it’s also fun to try to absorb the style (and stylishness) of a place that’s so different from home.

The first two pictures in this post are taken from the balcony of Cleo's apartment. The others are different angles on a remnant of the old city wall, parts of which are still to be seen around the city.