Authors’ note: This post covers the day of July 15th. I wrote it on July 17th on the train to the airport.
Sunday was a bit more relaxing and enjoyable. We woke up and wandered to a café really close to our hotel. I suppose I hadn’t mentioned this before, but our hotel was such a steal. We were about 2 minutes walking time from Grande Place. We got our own private room with 2 twin beds, our own bathroom and shower, and all for 60 euros a night. You’d pay 25 euros a night at most hostels for a shared room, shared shower, and no security for your stuff. Granted, we’re missing out on the hostel atmosphere, but seeing as how we’re already traveling with a friend, I don’t feel like we’re missing out on a lot.
So, breakfast was awesome. The café was simply called “Paul”. Smith said he saw another one, so it must be a chain, but the inside was still incredibly unique. We ate upstairs and it seemed that we were amongst locals just chatting away on a Sunday morning. We each got the almond chocolate bread that was delicious.
After breakfast we walked to the Mannekin Pis. Just wanted to take a picture of it without the stupid French costume. Then we walked to the cathedral. Mass was being conducted so we couldn’t go past the first section, which sucked, but it was pretty cool to see, hear, and feel the organ being played and the choir singing.
From there we did a little shopping. Can’t say who bought what. Don’t want to spoil any surprises. But we did buy some chocolate for our own consumption. Then we stopped off at the hotel before heading to lunch. We wandered through Rue de Bouchers and the alley off of it, and chose the place with the least pushy waiters waiting outside, and where they were advertising something other than seafood. Smith got a quarter of a rabbit cooked in a Gueuze sauce (gueuze is a type of beer). I got a Flemish stew with chicken, very creamy with leeks and potatoes. It was all I could do to finish my meal.
After eating we walked to Grande Place to get some info as to how to get to the Horta Museum. By their recommendation, we walked up to the Museum of Fine Art and caught a tram to the museum. We tried to figure out how to pay for our ride on the tram but couldn’t find a place or way to pay for a ticket, so we ended up scamming the city of Brussels for a couple euro ride on the tram. The tram was beautiful, obviously brand new.
The Horta museum was awesome. For those who don’t know (and I didn’t before Sunday) Horta was an architect in the early 20th century that pushed Art Nouveau. So this museum was his home and studio for a while. I wish we were allowed to take pictures, but sadly we were not. I love museums like this, where the building itself seems like a living work of art. I love seeing all the spaces from as many different angles as possible to see how it all fits together. I love trying to figure out what about that room or design makes it so great and so unique and what I could do to replicate that in the apartment or home I get later in life.
This house was built around a central square spiral staircase with translucent glass at the top to allow a lot of natural light to permeate the house. Every room off the central staircase is at a slightly different level than the ones next to it. So it’s really hard to say how many floors it had, or which rooms were on which floor. But that makes the space so interesting to look at. The very bottom floor was just a coat closet. The next rooms were more for entertaining, with the dining room and a large living room, called the music room. Roughly on the same floor was Horta’s office and reception area. The next rooms up were an entire apartment, with a bedroom, dressing room, bathroom, boudoir, and smaller living room. The top floor contained Horta’s bedroom, dressing room, bathroom, study, and a greenhouse. Distinct things I remember include the Gothic arches in the dining room and leading into the music room. Crown molding on the ceiling instead of on the walls in the private apartment. The golden light that permeated the whole space, assisted by yellow panes of glass on top of the staircase gold and yellow paint and wallpaper, and the extensive use of light wood, like American Ash in a lot of the furniture. The ceiling in the dining room was made to look like it was constructed out of a thousand tiny little bricks.
After the Horta museum, we took the tram back, again gipping Brussels out of a couple euros. Walking back from the tram we passed a couple doing wedding photos around town. They were buying and eating waffles. We then passed the rest of the wedding party waiting patiently. We then bought some chocolate and got waffles and ate them on the Grande Place.
We dropped stuff off at the hotel, and then the drinking began. We went to the Delirium Café and had 4 beers each, eating our chocolates while drinking the beer. We started with a Delirium tremens and nocturnum. Then I had a light (and I mean really light) slightly lemony Rulles Blonde, while Smith had the honeysweet Barbar. ThenI got the Trouffette Rousse and Smith got the Guillotine Bitter (to be honest I don’t remember what these tasted like at all). Then I went for the Chouffe Houblon IPA, and Smith got the Pink Killer (probably the best sour ale I’ve had, and by that I mean the least sour). At that point we decided to take a break and get some food. We walked to the kebab place just across the street from our hotel. We ordered, then sat down to wait for our food, when Smith suddenly panicked. He had lost his wallet.
At first I thought he was joking, because let’s be honest, that would be a total Smith thing to do. But when he left the restaurant to go back to Delirium I knew it was serious. He was gone for a few minutes, when I started to pray. And even though I know God has better things to do with his time than help rich Americans find their wallets while on vacation in Europe, Smith tapped me on the shoulder as I finished my prayer, with his wallet in hand. He had somehow dropped it while sitting at the bar in Delirium and when he had returned it was still on the floor under his seat. He is one lucky mother@#$%&*. Now that all was right with the world again, we settled down to eating our kebab, and then to go drinking again.
After dinner we decided to try some of these other bars that had been recommended to us. The first one was recommended by someone at the tourist info office, but the atmosphere there wasn’t great. The waiters were trying to be cool, sagging pants and whatnot, and I just realized I sound like an old man when I say that, but whatever. The beer was still good but we decided to move on. We stopped off at the hotel before heading to two cellar bars that had been recommended online. The first one we went to was closed, but the second one turned out to be a hidden gem, because there I got to drink a Westvletern. According to some beer buffs, the monks of Westvletern brew the best beer in the world. Thing is, they don’t want to get rich off of it, just make enough money to keep their abbey and charities running smoothly. So, they only sell it in Westvletern by appointment. And if you’re found reselling their beer, they will never sell to you again. So, I don’t know how/why this bar had this beer. But considering we didn’t have the time to devote an entire day to driving out to Westvletern, I decided to pay the 10 euros to try one. It was delicious. A lot of different flavors perfectly in balance so that no one flavor was dominant. It was 10% alcohol but you couldn’t taste it. It had a great long finish, and I was sad to see it go.
With our cash reserves all but spent, we decided it was better to head to a place that would take credit cards. So, we went back to Delirium, passing that same wedding party again, but decided to patronage the downstairs Delirium bar instead. There we had a few more beers (I want to say 3, but maybe 4). And to be honest I can’t remember them all. I know I had an Applebocq that tasted like Granny Smith apple juice and beer and a Rochefort 8, because it was the best non-Westvletern beer I’d had in Brussels. Smith says he had a Buffalo Stout, but that he can’t remember any others. You have to understand, this bar held the world record for most different types of beer commercially available. We’re talking thousands of different bottled beers kept in a giant walk-in regfrigerator and a book that you have to read to try to pick out what beer you want. The people next to us at the bar purchased one of these beer novels for 5 euros. They were an Irish couple. She works in Antwerp and he was down visiting for a week. This bar was obviously very young, very cool, very international. I’d expect that fully ¾ of the people there were students trekking around Europe. The walls were covered in beer trays, with no duplicates, so it was pretty awesome when we were able to pick out the PBR tray. But surprisingly no PBR on the menu, though they did have the standard American Bud, Coors, Miller, Michelob, Sam Adams, and then a range of offerings from a few microbreweries.
Drunk and happy we returned to our hotel, comforted by the knowledge that we had done Brussels right.
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