I was up pretty early in the morning, and was fortunately able to make coffee in the “lobby.” Though they have a 24 hour reception with some soft drinks and a coffee machine, the hostel isn’t so commercialized as to push their products on the guests. In one nook, there was a collection of plates and cups with a microwave and a tea kettle. The guy manning the reception was watching Youtube travel vlogs about Dakhla, Morocco (windsurfing capital of the world) and went on and on about how amazing it is there and that is where he is going on his next vacation. He was Moroccan.
There is a ton of museums and things to do in Brussels, but like every other city in Europe the city pass did not quite make economic sense unless one is either a machine capable of going non-stop from 10am to 6pm or on a package tour where one is content to go in a museum see three pieces and then dash off to the next. My primary goal was to European Parliament, which is free, and the secondary goal was to view the Royal Museums of Fine Arts. I was going to have to skip the Cartoon Museum, ta-ta Tintin.
The weather report predicted rain at 8am, noon, 3-4pm, and again in the evening, so my interpretation was to expect crappy weather all day so I went ahead and carried a rain jacket with me. It quickly became too warm to wear and the cloud coverage morphed into partly sunny, so I was stuck carrying around a jacket like an idiot all day.
I got a bit lost on the way to the European Union Parliament because I saw a grand looking building and naturally veered towards it (the Palace of Justice). At the EU headquarters, visitors are allowed to tour the “Parliamentium” with an audio guide available in all 24 official languages of the EU. Interactive exhibits play audio, videos, or pull up picture galleries with explanatory texts. I learned a lot about the origin and development of European cooperation and how the EU governmental bodies work today, but it was a bit of an information overload. The main takeaway is that the EU government is split between Brussels, Luxembourg, and Strasbourg (FR). MPs work in Brussels but travel to Strasbourg for voting sessions while Luxembourg houses a lot of administrative (i.e. translation) offices. So, when someone like Boris Johnson uses Brussels as shorthand for the EU, he is technically wrong.
After a solid two hours, I stumbled out of the exhibit with food on my mind. The idea of having a proper Belgian/French lunch appealed to me and I did some research to scout out a couple of possible restaurants. Its really funny that the “$” restaurants in the Lonely Planet are “$$” restaurants in Google. I walked a kilometer to one neighborhood to look at two contenders in person, one of which was on the street where Audrey Hepburn was born, but realizing that my French was not good enough to read the menu, I didn’t want to take the chance on ordering a 14-18 Euro meal and getting a big plate of mayonnaise.
Little Africa was also in the neighborhood, but seemed to be mainly fruit sellers and hair shops. The main street had McDonald’s, Burger King, some fast food chicken and a pizza shop, and after a very long deliberation, I settled on pizza.
Fully refreshed, I headed over to the Royal Museums of Arts and purchased the combo ticket including the Museum of Old Masters, Fin de Siecle, and the Magritte Museum. The museums were good and it was a nice use of the afternoon, but there really weren’t any standout pieces. For example, the most famous Magritte works — Son of Man, The Treachery of Images — are elsewhere. Fin de Siecle (1860s -1920s) covers pre- through post-Impressionists, but there wasn’t a single piece by any of the superstars of the era. Among the old masters, many of the Bruegel paintings were temporarily unavailable for whatever reasons. There was a decent (by which I mean delightfully grotesque) triptych by Hieronymus Bosch, but it is so not famous, it doesn’t even make the Wikipedia list.
I was pretty wiped out by quarter to five and headed back to the hostel directly afterwards. I drank some water and charged my electronics while pondering what to do for the evening. It didn’t seem like I’d find any social entertainment through the hostel, so I decided to check out Couchsurfing. There just happened to be the weekly meetup at a bar not too far away (an 8 minute walk), but I was on the fence about whether I wanted to drink or not. After a cup of coffee to perk me up, I decided to go for it.
The rather cavernous bar gave the impression of a dive bar, though not exactly with dive bar prices. While I wouldn’t have minded a nice sampling of Belgian beers on my last night in Belgium, the economics pushed me in the direction of 2-for-1 cocktails. It was a large and diverse group, many of whom have lived in Brussels for months or years. I need to come up with a quicker answer to “where are you from.” It’s not enough to just say the United States, everyone wants to know which city/state. If I say Washington STATE, 100% of people think I meant D.C.. After correcting them, they start asking me questions about Washington which I can’t answer because I’m not really from there.
Around 11pm, I figured it would be a good time to stop drinking. I had walked almost halfway back to the hostel before I remembered I hadn’t had any Belgian fries yet, and had to turn around to find a chip shop. Though mayonnaise is the most famous topping, every chip shop I’ve ever passed offers at least a half dozen choices of sauces (sold separately). I went for curry ketchup. The fries were fresh out of the fryer and it was a fairly substantial portion for my 4 euros. They were good.
| Prosciutto Pizza | 10.5 |
| Water and cake (Carrefour) | 1.67 |
| Museums | 15 |
| Alcohol | 20.5 |
| Chips | 4 |
| Total: | 51.67 EUR (403 RMB) (USD 58.04) |
Running Total: 20996.4 RMB (USD 3023.90)
Daily Average: 374.9 RMB (USD 54)