Brussels 101

After a rainy first day in Brussels, we awoke to a much nicer day for a second and last full day before we headed off to Paris the next day. We had a sleep in and planned out some activities for the day.

The first stop was a trip to the European Parliament which is one of the main offices of the European Union. It was interesting to explore the buildings and the scale was immense compared to the Beehive. We made it to the main parliament chamber which was set up to cater hundreds of MPs from all across Europe, with live transalation into all the different European languages.

After finishing up at the European Parliament, we walked slowly through a nearby park to find some lunch. We settled on a Syrian restaurant, which turned out to be some of the best food we’d had on the trip to date. In the afternoon we had booked a food & beer walking tour so we had some time to kill before that began at 4pm. We continued exploring the city, going through a park with some interesting cartoon, animal-themed water fountains, and stopping for some coffee along the way.

At 4pm we made our way to the starting point of the tour. We were greeted by Thiago, our very friendly and enthusiastic tour guide. There were 20 or so other people on the tour too from all around the world. Our tour mixed sights, history, food and a Belgian beer tasting at the end. First was chocolate tasting at Pierre Marcolini’s shop. Thiago described Pierre Marcolini as the Gordon Ramsay of chocolates, and we were all given a small box of assorted chocolates and a macaron to taste. The fact they didn’t last long probably describes how good they were. We continued walking through the city, with Thiago providing insights into the history of Brussels. The next food stop was for fries and waffles, two classically Belgian treats. Both were incredible and a perfect way to fill us up a bit before our Belgian beer tasting. The beer tasting contained a range of beers, from older trappist beers brewed by monks, through to modern IPAs. We enjoyed our drinks while making some friends with the other people from our table who were from Austrlia, Germany, Brazil and Canada. All in all the tour was great and it was a good day in Brussels. -VRead more