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Brussels Journals

Brussels without pissing

A September 2003 trip to Brussels by davidx

Quote: I had been before and seen that little fellow. With all the things in Brussels to look at, who needs a little boy pissing?
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Brussels without pissing Best of IgoUgo

Overview

Quote:
I had been to quite a few places in Belgium and arrived in Brussels to fly home from there next day. Hence I had very specific things I wanted to do in the time. I wanted to see the Grande Place for obvious reasons; I had missed the main art museums at Antwerp and Ghent and therefore the Ancient Art and the nineteenth century part of Modern Art were musts. I have had a bit of a thing about musical museums since I went to Ringve in Trondheim, Norway. This gave me another objective. The art nouveau of Brussels is famous and I very much wanted to see the Musée Horta. This journal deals with where I stayed and ate, what I thought of three of my planned destinations, and why I didn't get to the other.Q...Read More

Hotel Ascot Best of IgoUgo

Hotel

Quote:
I think by the time I found this hotel I might have accepted a pigsty, but it is far from that and I struck lucky. The rooms are large and en suite with telephone and multi channel TV. It cost me €60 for the night, including a very reasonable breakfast. The location near Place Louise makes it convenient for the metro and there are innumerable places to eat on the way. On the other hand, it took me less than 20 minutes to walk to the Grande Place. An unusual feature was that they let me keep my luggage in my room until 2pm. (I was less delighted when I found myself waiting while the lift was undergoing routine maintenance -- my room was on the 6th floor!) Never have I spent so...Read More

Member Rating 4 out of 5 on September 28, 2003

Hotel Ascot
Place Loix 1
Brussels, Belgium
1 800 426 5445

Quote:
I have chosen Dutch nomenclature this time, although I know no Dutch at all, because Brussels is a bi-lingual city. (It was the music museum at Ringve, Trondheim, Norway that got me going on museums of musical instruments.)

This really is a pearl among museums. The entry cost of €5. You can borrow headphones that work automatically wherever you see a headphone sign to give beautiful renderings of old keyboard and other instruments and all sorts of folk instruments. I don't really know what else to say. I am far from being an expert in the subject, but I do know that this is a spectacular collection and that I could have spent far longer there if my flight time had not started to loom.

Member Rating 5 out of 5 on September 29, 2003

Muziekinstrumentenmuseum
Hofberg 2 Rue Montagne de la Cour
Brussels, Belgium 1000
+32 2 545 01 30

Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique Best of IgoUgo

Attraction | "Musées Royaux des Beax Arts de Belgique"

Quote:
Technically this is two museums, one for Art Ancien [through the 18th century] and the other for Art Moderne [19th and 20th]. However, one ticket covers both and costs €5 for adults [€3.50 for concessionaries]. In many ways, the different centuries are all independent, as they had their own days of closure and meal breaks. Fortunately for me, the rooms containing Bosch, Brueghel, and Rubens were all conveniently timed, and it was fortunate probably that the 19th-century section was closed, as I should probably have missed the Museum of Musical Instuments, which is also a knock-out. I was sorry that I could not appreciate Memling properly, but I had no problems with Brueghel or Hieronymus Bosch in ...Read More

Member Rating 5 out of 5 on September 28, 2003

Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique
3 Rue de la Regence
Brussels, Belgium

Quote:
I was in Belgium for eight nights and I booked for the first night in Leuven, second in Antwerp, third and fourth in Ghent, and the last in Brussels before I went. The first four nights went to plan. The last was a disaster, and it was nobody's fault. There are obvious lessons for anybody booking B&B by e-mail. I started badly by getting the date wrong! My almost hostess (ah for short)then made a mistake by thinking I meant August rather than September. She corrected, I corrected, and she accepted the date as corrected. At this stage we were OK and she asked if I could give a rough time of arrival. I said I would phone from Belgium and let her know when I knew myself. Here we go, or ...Read More