Bruxelles

Posted: February 17th, 2007 | Author: saldarji | Filed under: travel | No Comments »

We stayed in the main shopping area, which runs south of the city along Luizalaan (Avenue Louise). Our hotel had two story windows and a loft space and overlooked the entrance to a car tunnel. The layout of the city reminded me of modern Boston, with the old center and plenty of underground tunnels to get around (ala the Big Dig).

The above photograph is from the Grand Place. Every Belgian city must have a cobblestoned central squre with very large and ornate buildings.

A short distance away is the Bourse, or exchange building. Rodin was involved in the sculpting of the facade. As nice as the NYSE building is, it is hard to imagine any building in America with this type of artwork on the exterior.

The above photograph is a random cathedral near town.

In addition to really good beer, the Belgians love their frites (French Fries.) I saw a funny t-shirt which read something to the effect of “Belgians invent frites…We’ll call them French Fries.” Brussels had a very French atmosphere to it, and it seems like they really just wanted to be French.

Anyways, we ate at Fritland, which had a great fritte sandwich – a roll with sliced turkey, cheese and frittes stuffed into it.

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