Grand Place

Daniel started the day with a run while Gab chatted with friends from home. We then headed to the Grand Place to meet up for our free walking tour! This was one of the longest and also most informative tours we had done so far on our trip with a very charismatic guide called Adrien. We learnt a lot during our 4km tour which went for almost 3.5 hours (with a short break half way through where we bought traditional frites!)

We learnt some interesting things such as:
- Belgium has 3 official languages being French, Dutch and German. 60% of the country is Dutch speaking and 40% of the country is French speaking (and less than 1% are German speaking). Brussels is the only multi-lingual city in Belgium and everything is supposed to be displayed in French and Dutch, however, 90% of people living in Brussels speak French and 10% speak Dutch.
- The site of the Grand Place was originally a market back in 11th century and it was later destroyed during conflict and rebuilt. The Grand Place is very impressive and contained the city hall (which is still used as a city hall today) and houses that were for different guilds (such as for writers, painters and bakers).
- In Belgium, people have to get married in their local city hall so people in Brussels have to get married on Saturday mornings in a small hall in the city hall (with a 20 minute time slot).
- The city hall with the large spire is the only original building standing in The Grand Place as all others had burnt down and been reconstructed. The spire is actually not in middle of building and as such the building is not symmetrical (the original design was symmetrical but then they decided to add to one side of the building but there wasn't enough room to make it symmetrical).
- There is a massive comic book industry in Belgium, including their most famous character - Tin Tin! There are over 70 comic book murals scattered on walls around the city of Brussels. Reading comic books is very popular for people of all ages and the French speaking comic book industry sells 10million copies every year (unlike the English speaking industry which serves many more people but sells around 1million copies a year).
- We stopped at the Manneken Pis - a statue of a little boy peeing from the 13th century. No one knows who and why it was put there (although there are many crazy legends!) So, basically the statue is famous for being famous but the people from Brussels don't mind it being their unofficial mascot - they don't take themselves seriously! There are a group of people who dress up the Mannekin Pis and he has over 1000 outfits. We saw him dressed up in a uniform of a student union.
- There is a lot of diversity in beer which is why it is so famous in Belgium! There is said to be around 25,000 different beers in Belgium, and about 80% of beers aren’t exported, so try them while you are there (which we plan to do!!)
- Belgium has an interesting history having been controlled by the Spanish, French and Dutch at different times. The Belgian Revolution was in 1830.
- There is a river under Brussels (called River Senne) which was covered up to get rid of the problem of cholera which killed many people in Brussels in the last 1800s.
- Traditional frites (fries) in Brussels are made by twice fried potatoes in beef fat oil at two different temperatures - delicious!
- We learnt all about chocolate! The cacao bean was bought to Europe in 1600s but solid chocolate as we know it was a 19th century creation. There were a number of rules which were followed closely in Belgium including that you can’t have anything less than 45% cacao mixture otherwise can’t call it chocolate, you could only use certain ingredients and you can't use vegetable oil instead of cacao. So for example, companies such as Cadbury/Hershey had to rename their products to chocolate-flavoured candy. These rules are mostly no longer in place but most Belgian chocolatiers still follow these traditions which is what makes the chocolate so good!

We stopped for a quick lunch break and then tried our next Belgian delicacy - waffles! We were recommended to get one from a food truck as it is the freshest and it did not disappoint, the taste was incredible!!

We then continued to walk around the city and spot some more of the comic murals, more peeing statues (one of a girl called the Jeanneke Pis and one of a dog called Het Zinneke!) and then a very interesting looking concrete truck made out of steel!

We finished the day with a few authentic Belgian beers in an old school pub recommended by our walking tour guide (called Les Brassiers). Gab tried an amber beer made by monks (a trappist ale) called Orval and Daniel tried a popular ale called Jupiler. We then headed back to the Airbnb.Read more