Day 2 - Touristing it up in Brussels

The Eurostar journey was pretty uneventful yesterday. Despite looking out of the window, I did not see any fish 🐠 as I crossed the Channel, and I made sure I was on the look-out for small boat crossings too..... 

It was early evening when I arrived in Brussels. The metro system took me a few minutes (and one journey in the wrong direction) to figure out, but Google Maps did its thing and got me to my hotel safely. The hotel is near the Royal Galleries, close to the Grand Place, and it is pretty busy around as apparently this is a big weekend with Belgian National Day tomorrow. 

An evening quest for food (success) was followed by a walk through said Royal Galleries and then a test of my photography skills at the Grand Place.

It is, as the name suggests, pretty Grand. Pleasingly for me, there were lots of Geocaching AdLabs around for me to use to learn some history. My visit here was then followed up with some good wandering around, with the highlight undoubtedly the Brussels Duck Store. 


It was then back to the hotel (a comfy place, and trying to be all modern with PINs to check in and apps for everything. They have got the basics right though - a nice selection of tea bags in the room, with a decent kettle and even milk), where I could have had an early night, but may have spent time watching baseball and then listening to the end of the Germany-France football.

A lovely brunch (at a Chat GPT suggested small place called Woodpecker 47) was followed by the compulsory visit to the Mannekan Pis. Apparently I need to re-visit tomorrow when he will be dressed up for the holiday.

In then wandering the streets nearby, I discovered Choco-Story, and its neighbour the Friet Museum. Given a dodgey looking weather forecast, I decided to go for the combi-ticket, although did make the questionable decision to go sweet before savoury. 


Both experiences were great - audioguides for both that were extensive on history and culture, a demonstration of chocolate making, free samples (I did, of course, take the fries with mayo), and some questionable propaganda to make sure that we all know that French Fries are, in fact, Belgian. Consider yourself lucky that I haven’t been able to upload my video of the Friet song here…/


More exploration of lots of side-streets followed including a bite to eat and some geocaching. Highlights of the wander included the Tintin mural and a particularly cunningly hidden geocache right in the Grand Place. 


I’m now sampling some of aforementioned tea before I head back out for more exploring.

Stat updates for the stattos:

Geocaches found: 1 traditional, 3 virtuals and 22 AdLabs

Distance covered by train: 365km

Countries: 2 🇬🇧🇧🇪

Comments

  1. Neil Webb20 July 2025 at 20:07

    Really interesting, the chip museum is now on my list of places to go. Happy travels

    ReplyDelete

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