I left Bruges after my leisurely breakfast and was in Brussels at the hotel around 12. It was easy to get to the NH Stephanie by Metro (subway), so I bought a 3 day "Discover Brussels" pass for 13 Euro. That was a really good investment because I caught the Metro and trams all over the place! When I got to my very nice room at the hotel, I remembered how good it was to have coffee and tea making facilities...a bit of space on the floor for my exercises...a mini bar fridge (and my room rate included the contents of the mini bar though I only drank one little bottle of wine)...and breakfast included in the price. Luxury!
I got the map from the hotel and discovered that the Horta Museum only opened for general admission in the afternoon, from 2pm, so I walked up there without taking a single photo on the way. I know, I surprised myself too! The museum itself costs 7 Euro and even with really taking my time, I was out of there within an hour. No photos allowed inside, but still, it was really great! I love art nouveau and this whole house is designed in the style. Really sad that photography was not allowed. But I did take a couple of the outside:
before walking back towards the hotel and the Metro to get into town:
so as to go to the only Information centre around the place, so I could get a better map at the Grand Place in Brussels' Historic Centre:
The inside courtyard of the Town Hall was rather nice in the Art Nouveau style:
I had found a brochure for an Art Nouveau tour and was told at the hotel that the Information office would be able to book it for me. They told me they couldn't and I'd have to do it online. Or better yet, buy one of their tours. I tried to get online to book it but couldn't get the website up. When I did finally manage to get to the site it was booked out (probably days in advance since it only ran once a month) so I had to buy the Information office's 3 Euro map, as well as their 50 cent map, since the Art Nouveau map wasn't complete. Not a very good Info office, I thought. Ours in Aus are much better and they're everywhere tourists go and well sign-posted. Anyway....since I was in the area, I thought I might as well do a few more grand old buildings, such as the Stock Exchange (which was also suffering the construction/renovation disease):
St Nicholas Church (where the caretaker peremptorily gestured me out of one of the little chapels and then proceeded to start turning off all the lights in the church, though there were still a few visitors in there and it wasn't closing time:
I headed back towards the Grand Place to go through but couldn’t resist taking some photos with the light on it just right:
up to the Cathedral of St Michael and St Gudula, which a was quite beautiful inside as well as outside:
Twice, while circumnavigating the cathedral on the way to some Art Nouveau buildings, I was accosted by men in business pants and shirts asking me for change for 2 Euros for the parking meter. I told them I didn't have any change and one of them was quite persistent. I just shrugged and walked off. I think they just wanted a look in my wallet because there was nobody else around and I looked like I might be easy pickings I suppose, with my backpack and camera slung around my neck...Or I'm just distrustful :-)
I found the Art Nouveau building in the form of the Comic Strip museum. It wasn't overly exciting and even if it wasn't closed by this time, I wouldn't have gone inside:
This cute little statue was at the top of the staircase that leads down to the street on which the Comic Strip museum is:
I headed back towards the Metro station but picked a different way since I didn't want to encounter the parking-meter-beggars again. The big buildings here somewhat reminded me of London around Whitechapel:
I noticed a pub called "The Office" and a free wifi sign, so I went inside and had a beer and planned out my itinerary etc using the wifi. It was 8.30pm by this time and daylight was burning, so I walked towards Parc du Bruxelles, (nice entrance) to photograph the Palais de la Nation and Royal Palace. The Parc had some quirky statues up (to do with brusselicious.be):
Park de la Nation wasn't so interesting:
I walked back through the park in the other direction, past some more of those statues:
to get to the Palais Royal, which the royal family don't live in - they live in a different palace in Laeken apparently:
The Palace Academies is on a corner of the Palace:
From here I intended to catch the Metro back to the Hotel and some dinner, but I got on the train going in the wrong direction. Not to worry, I got off at the botanical gardens which I'd thought to skip though I did like the look of the buildings when I saw them from near the Parc. So I wandered down to see them. I expected they'd be closed and they were, so I was only able to photograph form the outside:
There was church opposite the gardens, with some statues near the top that looked like someone jumping and people rescuing them. Quite realistic:
I caught a glimpse of St Mary's church and had to get closer. It's just beautiful!:
There was no way I wanted to walk all the way back to the station, so I called up google maps and asked it to navigate me back to the hotel via public transport. So good! I was able to get a tram from about 50m away all the way back to Place Stephanie. Even though it was 10:30pm by now, I hoped to get a meal, but after being ignored when I sat down at the same place I'd had lunch earlier, I just got up and went back to the hotel. There was always breakfast...
