Visit the photo set Brussels on Flickr.
Robin and I decided at the last moment (Thursday evening) to take a quick weekend trip out of Amsterdam. We flipped a coin between Cologne and Brussels and Brussels won.
As always, we took the train, a nice 2.5 hour trip to Brussels Central. We walked over to our hotel which was just north of the Grote Markt, the central plaza of town. Actually I should say we wandered around a lot, missed the sign for the street we were looking for, bought a map, had a beer, reviewed our location and then walked a hundred meters to the hotel, which was just around the corner. For 80 euros a night, the Floris Arlequin was more than acceptable and included breakfast.
We strolled though a lot of the old city and had dinner al fresco near the hotel in the touristy but adequate Rue des Bouchers area.
On Saturday, there was more walking, strolling through the antique market in the Sablon plaza, a visit to the Rene Magritte and The Royal Fine Arts museums, and probably the highlight of the trip, beer tasting. On Saturday night we returned to the Sablon area to have a nice dinner at the brassiere L’Entrée des Artistes. There was a festival with music in the Sablon so we checked out the band who were quite good and all women to boot.
Sunday, we took the sightseeing bus and saw the wider area of Brussels including the reminder building from the 1958 Expo, the Atomium. After some lunch, we grabbed the train back to Amsterdam.
