The Beautiful Architecture of Brussels
If you’re someone who loves architecture and history, Brussels is a fantastic city to visit. I wasn’t entirely impressed when I first entered the city because there didn’t seem to be much to do at first glance. However, my opinion completely changed once I reached the city square — the Grand Place to be exact. I was in complete awe; never had I seen such elegant building design and certainly never concentrated in such a small area. Every direction I turned was the façade of another intricate building that was meticulously hand crafted with gorgeous patterns, gold accents and crowned with stone statues. Truly an amazing feat for the architects and builders who created these gorgeous structures in the late 1600s and another feat to Brussels for preserving them so well over the centuries.
If you can manage to convince yourself to leave the city square, the famous Manneken Pis statue is just a three minute walk away. The statue was far smaller than I originally imagined (and happened to be dressed up that day).
Walk another ten minutes from here and you can visit a gorgeous church named the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula, which you can enter freely.
The remainder of my day consisted of drinking Belgium beer and eating Belgium waffles. While it was strange that all of the main attractions happened to be located super close together, it was perfect for myself as I only had one day to spend in the city before flying back to France the next morning. Though this did make for an interesting dilemma.
Since boarding for the flight back to Marseille closed at 7:45 a.m. and taking a shuttle to the airport in the morning would be too risky given the short time frame, we decided that sleeping at the airport to ensure our boarding and avoid paying for another hostel was the best decision. In retrospect, this was a terrible idea. I could not for the life of me sleep in that airport. It was so small and had no place to actually lay down comfortably. All of the chairs had metal arms so I couldn’t sleep across them and the floor was freezing without any blankets. Despite the long night, the flight back was really smooth and before you knew it, we were back in residence by noon! Quite amazing that so much land was conquered in a matter of 5 days. The spur of the moment nature of this Amsterdam & Brussels trip made these great cities even better, in my opinion. I’m so happy that my Eurotrip has finally taken shape and I can’t wait to continue travelling in the upcoming weeks!
But first thing’s first and that’s Orientation, which is tomorrow! I doubt anything can compare to Wilfrid Laurier’s O-week but I won’t give up on Euromed just yet. The next few days will be a blast in meeting even more international students and adding them to my already enormous list of new friends.
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This blog entry is part of the publication Robert Cekan Travels & was originally written on September 10, 2012
Robert Cekan is a young entrepreneur and proud Hamiltonian. He is the founder of the Hamilton discovery website True Resident, as well as Cekan Group, a property management group. He is also a Hamilton REALTOR® with Ambitious Realty Advisors Inc., Brokerage and an active blogger.
For all of Robert’s projects, please visit robertcekan.com
