The peeing boy in Brussels

The time had come for another European adventure, which started out like most others with an air-plane ticket purchased with Ryanair (sure it may have some issued, but it’s a cheap way to get around Europe) with a short flight to Charleroi where we were picked up at the airport by a friend of ours that I used to work with in Dublin.

A 30-minute car ride brought us to the city with our first destination being “Parc du Centenaire”, just outside the city centre, where we saw the Atomium, an enormous structure of an atom that was built for the Belgian World’s Fair 1958. Made of aluminium it stretches a good 106 meters and it’s supposed to be in scale, it’s only been magnified 150 thousand million times.

After that we ran across the Chinese Pavilion and the Japanese Tower. The Pavilion was built in the beginning of 1900’s and has a museum of porcelain. The Tower, across the street, was bought by king Leopold II at the Paris Exhibition of 1900 and shipped here to Belgium.

Having explored these buildings, we returned to our car, continuing to the city centre where we strolled along Rue Neuf – Nieuwstraat, the main shopping street, where we found a great place for a coffee and some snacks (chocolates mostly, this being Belgium after all).

Now, the time for some serious Belgian business had arrived, it was time to try some traditional Belgian beers and we visited the family-owned brewery/museum Cantillon, Brussels Museum Van De Geuze, famous for making Lambic—the champagne of beers. There are a lot of different flavours depending on what berries are used in the beers and it was a great place to visit and sample some very tasty beers, even if the taste is very different to what I’m used to.

After enjoying the beers, the next stop was the Belgian Centre for Comic Cartoon Art, a must for me as I’ve grown up reading a lot of Belgian Comics. The most famous of all being Tintin and his adventures, and yes, time flew by as a relieved some of my childhood memories.

After spending a few hours in there, it was time for some more drinks and what else to have in Belgium but another beer. We made our way to “The Grand Place”, a huge square with a blending of architectural and artistic styles that characterises the culture and society of this area. After finding a place to sit, which we eventually did, we enjoyed a few good beers.

Our final stop was “The Manneken pis”, which was a bit overrated to be honest, it’s a very small statue of a pissing boy, but anyway,  it’s something that has to be seen when in Brussels I guess. 

I enjoyed Brussels and really enjoyed the comic museum and the Grand Place which is really impressive. I enjoyed the small brewery I visited and it was fun seeing comic art all over the city.