Brussels, Belgium

Travelling from Bruges to Brussels takes about an hour long journey. We eventually landed ourselves at the Central station and headed in the direction of the main square - Grand Place, voted the most beautiful square in Europe in 2010.

Brussels has often been mentioned by our expat friends as the boring second city compared to the beauty of Bruges as it was full of EU government buildings. We concluded otherwise, finding it to have just as much charm, great food and interesting architecture as Bruges.

Waffles
The splatter of rainfall resulted in us swapping our plans to sightseeing around the city on foot and instead take shelter in a waffle shop branded as the "Australian Homemade Ice-cream Shop". Apparently this is a very well known Belgian franchise, although the sign with the kangaroo did surprise us. Our waffle of choice had a dark chocolate topping over strawberries and icing sugar - filling and messy.

Delirium Cafe
After enjoying our sugar fix, we then relocated ourselves to a couple of streets away where we located the famous Delirium Cafe with its beer menu of over 2000 items that are nicely printed out in a 'magazine' that would put an Ikea catalogue to shame.

Olie and the Delirium Cafe beer magazine

Beer trays at Delirium cafe

Fruit beer - mango, strawberry and apple

Surrounded by the Belgian beer exhibit

Hop On Hop Off Bus Tour
As it was raining, we decided that taking a 'Hop on Hop off' bus tour would be the most practical transport option. It didn't disappoint either. For 90 minutes the bus drove us past historical landmarks including the Royal Palace, Palace of Justice (larger than St Peter's Basilica in Rome); European (EU) Parliament (we were told it was slightly busier during the week when they were crunching out the Euro bail-out package) and the Atomium - a 102 metre tall monument made for the World Fair in 1958.

Atomium structure, just outside of Brussels

Church built by Leopold I in memory of his wife

Garden tribute to the medieval guilds

Grand Place
The historical area of Brussels is focused on the Grand Place or Grote Markt - the main square that was used for markets, citizen assemblies and now a focal point for tourists as it contains some of Brussels' most richly decorated buildings that look amazing during the day but even better when lit up at night.

Town Hall, Brussels

Rue des Bouchers
After our bus tour, we needed to keep an eye on the time in order to catch our train back to London - as well as keeping in mind that the clocks had all changed to winter time on the previous day. We had read about a street full of seafood restaurants and decided to splurge on one last meal at Rue des Bouchers.

Tourist trap? Yes. We were lured in by the 'free drink' pitch that Olie upped to 'free beer and free cherry cocktail' but the atmosphere was fun, lively, warm, inviting and the perfect way to finish off our foodies tour of Belgium.

A tempting cart full of seafood

Yum...seafood platter, after a 'starter' of 1kg of mussels

Snuggled up next to the fire at the restaurant

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