Our last night in Brussels, as it turned out, wasn’t all that eventful. This isn’t unusual on our trips, as our last nights in places usually consist of packing up for the next day’s departure, while taking a break for dinner and maybe a little window shopping. This being the case, much of this last Belgium page is devoted to a brief retrospective of some of the wonders we found there. A word of warning, though: as noted earlier, Brussels is not a city for dieters. If you happen to be one of these unfortunate people, you might want to look away, or maybe think about baseball. Or skip this page altogether, and move directly on to Amsterdam.

To a certain class of people, the most important distinctions of the city of Brussels are as a meeting place for the European Parliament and as a center of international finance. The financial aspect of the city is centralized in its stock exchange (known in French as the Bourse de Bruxelles), first established by Napoleon in 1801 and now global in reach. The stock exchange is housed in a large 1873 building usually referred to simply as The Bourse.

This part of the city’s personality was pretty much lost on us. Our needs were simpler.

Waffles? Check.

Frites? Also check.

The regular meals also weren’t half bad, though they could be expensive.

More international cuisine could also be found.

On the Rue du Marche aux Herbes (parallel and to the north of the Grand Place) we came across a fascinating place called the Patisserie Orientale which specialized in Mediterranean pastries. We were able to try a few of them, but the variety was overwhelming. Everything was gorgeously displayed.





All of this was wonderful, but to some people, Belgium is all about the chocolate.








Which brings us to our last evening in Belgium. Though not too eventful, the evening wasn’t eventless either. Up to this point, we’d somehow managed to avoid sampling much in the way of Belgian chocolate, and it seemed that this would be our last chance to correct this glaring oversight. Earlier we’d seen several chocolate shops on the street leading to the Manneken-Pis, and we headed in that direction. Though all of the shops on this street (the Rue de l’Etuve) naturally catered to tourists, we went into a small one that seemed the least touristy. If I remember correctly, it was called Choco-holic (the Choco-holic website seems to imply that they’ve since moved to larger quarters elsewhere). Inside the somewhat cramped but fortunately uncrowded shop there was a glass case like those found in jewelry stores, crammed full of layers and piles of cocoa-infused calorie bomblets.

We agonized for a bit and eventually pointed out our selections to the patient storekeeper. She put our chocolates (I don’t recall exactly how many, but I think less than ten) into a little box, and we headed back toward the hotel. We somehow managed to not eat all of the chocolates at once, but we did stop to try one apiece. As I recall, mine was magnificent – it seemed to have a fragility to it which might have made transporting it a problem (if it had lasted long enough to require transporting), but which made eating it a wonderful experience. Nella and Connie seemed to be equally impressed with their choices.

Our route back to the hotel took us through the Grand Place, which looked quite different at night.


The square was also really crowded, which reminded us of another Belgian obsession held by many.

Belgian beer is revered by many throughout the world, and we’d stumbled across a weekend beer festival being held in the Grand Place. With Nella and I being basically non-drinkers, we hadn’t really thought about the beer, but there were clearly many who were deeply involved with it. This cleared up the mystery of the booths we’d seen people working on a couple of days earlier.



I wish I could review the beer for you, but I didn’t drink any, and probably couldn’t have distinguished good from bad if I had. But the reactions of the youthful throngs seemed to indicate that they were enjoying the greatest beverage ever.

We made it the rest of the way back to the hotel without incident. It was actually rather quiet once we got through the square. We elevated up to our hotel room and finished our preparations for the next day’s adventure, a train ride to the Netherlands.