Belgium 2015

I took a trip to Belgium with Yeongmi last September.  The primary purpose was to present a paper at the Dynare Conference, but we spent a fair amount of time sightseeing before and after the conference.  The bottom line is the waffles are to die for, the chocolate is superb, but I can't comment on the quality of the beer.  Oh and the best part is they never ask "Do you want fries with that?", the assumption being that of course you do and they're automatically included!

Old Guild Halls on the Main Square in Brussels

Trip to Brussels

We connected to Brussels via New York's JFK airport.  As with our trip to Switzerland in the spring, we arrived in the morning, which gave us the opportunity to get over jet lag by dropping our bags off at the apartment and then taking a tour in the afternoon.  We stayed in a great place not far from the Main Square in Brussels; at this Airbnb place.  The tour office was a two-minute walk from the apartment.

Waterloo Tour

The Waterloo tour was a great afternoon trip and a wonderful way to combat jet lag.  We drove in a bus from downtown Brussels south to the town of Waterloo, which is a few miles north of the battlefield.  Here we saw the Wellington Museum at the building where Lord Wellington spent the night before the battle.  From there we drove to the battlefield itself and saw the brand new museum that had just been opened up for the 200th anniversary of the battle.  We also saw the Battlefield Panorama, a huge 360-degree mural painted in a round building and finished in 1912.  Finally, we went to Hougoumont farm, on the western side of the battlefield and site of some of the heaviest fighting on June 18, 1815.

This tour and the other organized tours we went on were run by a company called, Brussels City Tours.  The Waterloo tour we booked originally via Viator.com, and two of the others via City-Discovery.com.  The tour was great, but an afternoon does not too the site justice.  We felt a bit hurried at the battlefield as there was much to see and only a short time to see it all.  The museum alone could take several hours!  If you are a big history buff, I would recommend doing a full day at least.  But for a fun afternoon to keep you awake and fight off jet lag, this tour is ideal.

Building in Waterloo where Wellington spent the night before the battle.

New Waterloo Battlefield Museum

Details of the Battlefield Panorama

The Lion Mound

270-degree panorama of the battlefield from Hougoumont

Hougoumont from the South

Brussels City Tour

On our second day we took a tour of the City of Brussel with the same tour company.  We booked this one at the office the day before while we were waiting for the Waterloo departure.  This was mostly sightseeing from the bus, with a recorded commentary in many different languages that you could listen to with headphones.  We did get out and walk around at a couple of places.  First, before getting on the coach we went over to the Main Square (Grand Place in French, Grote Markt in Dutch).  We had already walked through there the day before, but it was nice to have someone explain everything.  We also stopped at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, an art deco cathedral, and at the Atomium at the site of the 1958 World's Fair.  We ended our tour near where we started at the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula.

Shop Near our Apartment

The Town Hall in the Main Square 

Details of the Town Hall 

Roof of the City Museum on the Main Square

View from the dome of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart

Basilica of the Sacred Heart

The Atomium

Wanderings During the Conference

The conference was on September 28th and 29th at the Central Bank of Belgium, not far from our apartment.  In the evenings we wandered around the old city.  We saw some churches and ate some great food and got to see Manneken Pis.

Belgian Fries with Tartar Sauce

Waffles to die for 

Manneken Pis

From the Main Square

Central Bank of Belgium

The Old Bourse

Remains of the City Walls

Trip to Ghent and Bruges

The day after the conference we took a day trip to the cities of Ghent and Bruges.  This was a bus tour and the sites were absolutely enchanting.  We went to Ghent first, a modern city with a very well-preserved historic center.   Bruges was last, the whole city being a UNESCO historic site and left relatively unchanged for centuries after its harbor silted up.

Photos from Ghent

Photos from Bruges

Trip to Luxembourg and Bastogne

The next day we took a trip to the city/country of Luxembourg and then stopped at the WWII battlefield site in Bastogne.  This was a long trip of 12+ hours, much of it on the bus.  We had a wonderful stroll through Luxembourg and had some great snacks there.  We spend much of the day driving though the Ardennes Forest, which was very pretty.

Photos from Luxembourg

Photos from Bastogne

Trip to Liege

Our last day we took an independent trip to Leige, where some of my mother's ancestors come from.  We took the train and the first thing we did after arriving at the station was take a taxi to see the John Cockerill Statue in Seraing, a small town just outside Liege where one of the first steelworks in Europe was built.  See this link for a discussion of why we went here. Then we took the same taxi into the city and saw the cathedral there.  We did some shopping, ate a waffle, and took in the ruins of an old church under one of the main plazas before returning to Brussels.

Photos from Liege