Departure with an Alitalia flight at 21:15 from Rome Fiumicino and arrival at Brussels airport at 23:40. Flight slightly delayed. On arriving at the airport we find a mild desolation: everything is shut down, shops closed, services absent. We seem to be the only passengers in the whole airport. It is ugly to say it, but it feels like being at... Rome Fiumicino on a normal evening after 10 pm, when the silence, the darkness and the desolation make it seem like 3 in the morning... between the exit and the arrival at the exit of the sterile area we take about twenty minutes, and we know that the last train to Brussels leaves at 00:27. But our hotel is not at a distance walkable from the station, we do not want to take a night bus, and the metro will be closed when we arrive.
So we stoically opt for a taxi, knowing in any case that a not-cheap outlay awaits us, and that is why we never do it. We take a beautiful taxi (in reality they are all large-engine Mercedes) that in about twenty minutes takes us to our destination for the modest sum of 45€! Real thieves!!
Hotel As accommodation we chose the Mercure Hotel Center Louise. It is located in the Avenue Louise area at Chaussée de Charleroi 38, part of the Accor Hotel chain. The first comment concerns the location of the hotel, which is not exactly in the central area, in the historic part of Brussels, to be clear. The Grand Place area can be reached with tram 92 or 94, or less conveniently by metro. I say less conveniently because there is no direct line to the central station (Gare Centrale) but you have to change at the Arts-Loi station. The metro station closest to the hotel is Louise, about a 10-minute walk away. The tram, on the other hand, is about 100 metres away. The metro takes you more conveniently with the blue line and in three stops to the Gare du Midi.
In the evening, though, if you linger in some brasserie in the centre, getting back to the hotel becomes a problem (an expensive one), unless you want to take a good twenty-minute walk (at a brisk pace). The hotel is very much business style with little personality and certainly not very elegant. Large hall with paid internet stations but free newspapers, even in Italian. The wi-fi in the hall area is paid, while in the rooms it is not available. At the reception, very kind and quick staff, the only real positive note. Room on the 2nd floor, number 229. The room is a standard double. I must say that its size strikes you immediately: substantial spaces with an entrance hall with a spacious wardrobe and a very large room.
Besides the double bed (not very big and perhaps more a queen than a double) the room has an armchair, a nice floor lamp and a long desk on which there are an LCD television, all the necessities for tea and coffee with the relevant kettle (all free), a safe (strangely located on the floor in a place that is not exactly handy to use and, above all, barely visible!). On the desk there is also the connection for high-speed internet via LAN (but as I said, no wi-fi) and obviously paid. No minibar. Large bathroom with sink and bathtub with shower. Obviously no bidet. Daily change of shampoo and soap (but always just one little bottle for two people!). Everything seemed clean but certainly not new, old and shabby. The room too was furnished with little taste, anonymous with rather dated Ikea-style furniture. Terrifying view onto a terrace or internal embankment of the hotel.
There is air conditioning, simple to use, but during the night there were loud noises from the hotel's or the other rooms' cooling pipes, so even with the air conditioner off the noise was rather annoying... another negative note: the breakfast, which we could not take because of the price, namely 21€ per person! Are you serious??? The cost of the room was in any case not excessive compared to the prices we had seen for hotels of a lower category but more central, and we managed with 257€ for 4 nights' stay. The things in my opinion that were disappointing were the absence of a minibar (to drink a glass of water, what are you supposed to do?), the absence of wi-fi in the room (being a business hotel it seems really strange to me) and the decidedly aged look. For the rest, ok on the price but not the location, not exactly convenient.
Brussels public transport You move towards the centre or towards the train stations and towards the Atomium by metro and tram. The transport is not at a European level, or rather that of the other European capitals. It is expensive (very) and poorly punctual. Moreover, buying tickets is rather complicated, not as simple as it should be. I had rather high expectations for Brussels, but instead this aspect too really disappointed me. The metro has 4 lines, two of which are almost completely overlapping as a circuit. Yes, you understood correctly: metro lines 2 and 6 overlap except for the final part of line 6, which from the terminus of line 2 continues to the terminus in the Heysel district. But what sense does it make to have two overlapping lines? It makes no sense, maybe there is some hidden reason... who knows... the metro carriages are thirty years old, dirty and poorly ventilated.
At the metro entrance there is no barrier, just the validating machines for stamping the ticket. At the exit there is no barrier, you just go out. People stamping their ticket? None, only tourists. Maybe they all have a season ticket, let's say. To buy a ticket there are multilingual machines, but they accept only small coins and local debit cards (no credit cards). And someone who does not have a local debit card, what do they do? They're stuck!! Either they find the open kiosk inside the station that sells tickets, or they go in without one and hope not to encounter the inspector. A different matter on the tram/bus, where you can instead buy the ticket on board directly from the driver with a surcharge. Of course, if you get on without saying anything, no one will ask you anything, it is not like in London where you have to show the driver your ticket/season ticket. Prices: expensive.
A single-ride ticket costs 1.70€ and is valid for 60 minutes from validation. You can change means as many times as you like but you must validate each time. If you buy it on board it costs 2€ (how generous!). Then there are multi-tickets of 5 and 10 tickets, much more convenient because they can be used within a year of purchase and obviously also by several people (the 10-ticket one costs 12.30€). We took this one. Alternatively there is a day pass costing 4.50€, which of course allows you to move freely around the city (but not to/from the airport) for one day. For the airport there is the train of hope (as we nicknamed it) because it seems to date back to the First World War and, of course, is punctually late. It costs 5.10€ for a single ride and takes about 20 minutes to connect the main Brussels stations (Central, Midi and Nord) with the airport.
The metro starts running at around 5:30 and terminates at around midnight (depending on the lines). The trams continue for another hour or so, but with very sparse runs, then give way to the night buses. Getting around the centre of Brussels is easy on foot and you don't need public transport, which I would say is needed only to go to the European Parliament area or the Atomium.
Day 125 Jun 2010
Second part
Scattered throughout the city you will find parking areas where there are dozens of yellow bicycles. These are the bikes made available by the municipality of Brussels. They work in a simple and intuitive way: you pick them up from one parking area and take them to another. In every parking area there is a multilingual machine that explains how to do it: you need to have a credit card and pay a daily fee (1.5€ per day, or 7€ for a week, but there are also annual subscriptions). The fee allows you to use the service. Then you have to pay the rental service, which is free for the first half hour and then costs 50 cents up to one hour and gradually increases until you go over two hours, when the rental will cost two euros per hour. With the card you also pay a deposit of 150€ in case you steal or lose (or more likely) get the bike stolen.
The deposit obviously will be refunded if the bike is properly returned. Be careful because once you return the bike to the parking area you have to go to the machine, enter the rental number (on the receipt that will be given to you when you pay the access fee) and enter the password that you chose at the time of rental. All this to get you to give the receipt (fundamental, I'd say) of the return. Don't leave without it, we saw reckless Spanish tourists not asking for it and I think they will have serious problems once back home!). The other difficulty is finding a free stall when returning the bicycle. In fact, we never had problems finding available bikes but we did have problems, especially in the evening, finding free stalls to be able to return them!! And then it's big trouble.
Once we spent an hour and also had to pay for the subway ticket!! In fact, in every machine at the parking area there is also a map that tells you the nearby parking areas and the free spaces… when it says "zero" everyone will be in big trouble because you won't be able to do anything but move to the farthest parking areas in a desperate search for a free spot. I must say that the biggest problems are in the evening compared to during the day. Getting around Brussels by bicycle is fun and practical but rather dangerous and tiring. In fact, there are no bike lanes but only dedicated lines along the roads alongside the normal roads and the Belgians drive like Italians, that is, not exactly calmly. The other thing is the ups and downs. Brussels, especially in the central part, is anything but flat…rather challenging climbs and descents, cobblestones everywhere.
Fortunately the bikes have gears but they are not shock-absorbing and so they will shake you to the bone…and your backside will really feel it! Anyway, it's a fun experience and definitely cheap compared to public transport. It's also good for your health, so what more could you want? Climate Belgium is notoriously a rather rainy country…I read that it rains more than 200 days a year, which places it at the top of the list among the rainiest European countries. We got 4 days of full sun with 30 degrees during the day and cool in the evening. Legendary! The heat was never oppressive anyway, only in the central hours of the day does it get rather hot but still bearable. What was beautiful instead was the feeling of light you have and therefore also the length of the day.
The sky doesn't get dark before 22:30 and so people pour into the streets and crowd bars, brasseries, pubs, restaurants or simply walk along streets and squares enjoying the summer. Restaurants are open until late and, contrary to what happens in winter, it's possible to eat even after 23:00. Trains Our trips between Brussels, Antwerp and Bruges always took place by train. This too is disappointing, as with the metro and trams of Brussels. They are old, slow and above all late! The only positive note is: when you buy a ticket you never have a reservation and therefore you can take any train (whether it's IR or IC) at any time as long as it's within the day for which you bought it. During the weekend (that is, from Friday to Sunday) train tickets are heavily discounted and it's a real pleasure to go around.
To give you an idea: Brussels-Bruges on a weekday, an hour and a quarter journey, one person in second class pays 25€ round trip. For Antwerp during the weekend, a 45-50 minute journey round trip, one person in second class pays 7.5€! For this reason the trains are very crowded and often people travel standing…so try to check the timetables well and figure out if there's an alternative train for your destination. Especially the ones going to Bruges are cattle cars because there are hundreds of young people who take it to go to the sea at Ostend along the North Sea coast… Eating During the day there are many opportunities from fast food, from waffles (which seems to be the national dessert!) sold by dozens of shops and various stalls in all kinds of sauces, and obviously the brasseries that make quick and light dishes (if you want) such as salads, sandwiches, bread with cold cuts, etc.
Eating, get this into your head, is absolutely not cheap. Two sandwiches will cost about 8€ each in a brasserie while a salad can cost about 12€. The price of beer is very reasonable, especially if you get the local one: 25 cl of Hoegaarden (white wheat beer) costs 2.5€, going up to 4€ for a pint. The prices of Leffe and the classic lager are also good. If instead you go for the Trappist ones, dark, double malt, fruit-flavored…in bottles they cost a few cents more but we never found even a very refined beer at more than 6€. Watch out for the alcohol content because some reach 8-10 degrees of alcohol and so, especially with the heat at lunchtime, they go straight to your head and will cut your legs out from under you!
Manneken Pis
Day 226 Jun 2010
Last part
Things to see in Brussels Obviously the most interesting and famous thing is the Grand Place where the Town Hall is located. If you go there on a Saturday morning you will find dozens (I'm not joking) of couples and their relatives going there for weddings. In the evening they were setting up the square for evening concerts. The square is very beautiful and evocative and is certainly one of the main attractions of the city. On the square there is also a shop of the famous Godiva chocolatier where a pastry chef threatens the lives of bystanders with strawberries dipped in melted white and dark chocolate and other delicacies of that sort. Very good but equally expensive…5 strawberries with chocolate cost 5.50€! Not bad, Mrs. Godiva. Then there is the notorious and equally famous Manneken Pis, that is, the little boy peeing.
It is a small statue located a few steps from the Grand Place that is famous throughout the world. It's a little boy peeing! Is that all?? Yes, that's all, but the disappointment is very bitter, as with the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen, is its size. Truly ridiculous! The statue is probably no more than 30 centimeters tall but it is very famous, so much so that it has an absurd number of little outfits that adorn it according to historical situations, city and world events. A spoiled child, crowded with tourists and truly ridiculous! Other interesting things I would say are: - The Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula - The square and the Church of St. Catherine - The square and the Church of St. Catherine - The Stock Exchange - The building that houses the European Parliament (although rather anonymous) - Atomium.
Very cute and interesting for taking photos and for the adjacent park (including the amusement park) but definitely less interesting to visit inside (it's really money thrown away) - Heysel Stadium. This place is sadly famous for the Juventus-Liverpool final that ended in tragedy with almost 40 people crushed to death by the crowd. The causes were the idiotic Liverpool fans and the Belgian police who, on that occasion too, proved completely incompetent and unprepared. Today the spirit of memory of the Belgian people has decided to remember that tragedy by changing the name of the stadium, which today is called King Baudouin Stadium.
You will not erase that memory in people's minds; it will be a shame that you will carry with you forever (sorry for the outburst) Conclusion I had been there ten years ago and it seems to me that Brussels was in great ferment to be up to the level of the greats. Today, after ten years, I must say that it has taken quite a few steps…backwards. It is the dirtiest city I have ever visited, papers and bottles scattered everywhere, public transport worse than those found in Italy, total anarchy. A poor sense of safety and construction sites that seem to have been abandoned for years complete the picture of a city that does not resemble the Capital of Europe but a city of an emerging country that is trying to make itself beautiful and give itself some class (without succeeding). Please do something and do it quickly because this really won't do!
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