Day 170: South to Brussels

A return to Brussels, another city I hadn't visited since my first trip to Europe twelve long years ago. Thankfully a fairly easy trip today, just a short walk to Antwerp station from our Airbnb, then a single train for about 40 minutes, then a short walk, a tram to the right suburb, then another short walk to our hotel.

We'd had an intentionally lazy morning, spent a bit of time on Skype and so on, and didn't actually get to the station until nearly lunchtime. Arrived at our hotel around 2pm which was still early for checking in, but it was a fairly large hotel with a lot of rooms, so checking in early wasn't a problem.

Nice room up on the seventh floor with a good local view across to the immense Palais de Justice. Very modern and funky decor which was nice! First hotel we've stayed at in quite a while, since Paris I think? I don't recall staying in a single hotel in the UK.

We relaxed for a couple of hours then headed out for a walk in the area. Brussels has a very different feel to Antwerp, it's much newer, feels wealthier, and far less multicultural than Antwerp. Sort of like going from Parramatta to Newcastle I guess.

We had a nice walk around the area in warm sunshine, checking out a multi-part world heritage site: the townhouses of Victor Horta. He was a Belgian architect who was very important to the development of Art Nouveau, and designed quite a few buildings in various parts of Brussels. This entry on the WH list is four of his townhouses - three of which are private property and only viewable from the exterior, but the fourth is a museum and his former residence. We filmed outside each one, and made plans to return to the museum without Schnitzel.

Our district reasonably explored, we walked back to near our hotel and headed into a square-front bar, occupied two seats in the sunshine and drank a couple of beers. Lots of different ones to choose from which is good, Belgium is known for its beers and here outside the tourist areas the prices are very good!

Decided to grab an early dinner so we hit up the fancy kebab shop across the road from our hotel, ate in the sunshine and then headed upstairs where we spent the rest of the evening relaxing and planning.Read more