Brussels, Belgium
11:30 am

I started to get out of order, so I figured I'd better catch up on last weekend before posting about the medieval festival.

There are lots of little streets like this that look so inviting!

This is the view from the top of that same street--equally romantic.

That street leads into this typical Brussels intersection.

This is a pretty common picture--if you see 1 photo of Brussels, it's likely to be this shot. This garden and walkway connect the lower city, with Grand Place and all its little shops, with the upper city, where the Royal Palace, museums, etc. are located. (From this shot you are facing Grand Place, as you can tell from the spire of the Stadhuis, while the upper city is behind you.)

Shots like the one above don't always include this awesome garden, which I am personally a really big fan of.

Of course, on the other hand, they also don't include more realistic stuff like this, the clutter is everywhere. There is a lot of building and renovation all over the city, so a lot of structures are covered in scaffolding like this, and construction equipment is a pretty common sight.

Turning around 180 degrees from the last few shots, this is the view of our good buddy the King of Jerusalem up the hill.

The Belgian Royal Museum of Fine Arts is just to the right as you face this square.


This is actually located more to the northwest of that square, but I had to make a quick interruption to add this great tribute to "Old England."

For whatever reason it didn't occur to me to take a picture of the outside of the Fine Arts Museum (perhaps because it wasn't that nice), but this is the inside. I know it's a random view, but it's well nigh impossible to capture a huge room in one shot, so I just tried to give a feel of the main hall.

This cool (and large) painting was prominently displayed in that main hall.

This is the view from the second floor of the museum.


Walking down the same road that goes from the King of Jerusalem past the Fine Arts Museum and towards the Palais de Justice, you come to this park on your left. These are Counts Egmont and Hoorne, executed at Grand Place in 1568 by the order of King Phillip II of Spain.

This little park ("le petit sablon") is located at Sablon Square, the site of the 14th-century Church of Our Lady of the Victories (Église Notre Dame du Sablon). This is where part of the medieval festival took place this week, but more to come on that later. This area is also the center of the antique shops and art galleries in Brussels.

If you can tell from the above two pictures, there are little statues surrounding the center statute along the perimeter of the park. There are 48 of these statutes, and I learned last night that they actually represent all of the medieval guilds of Brussels. Apparently in old times tradesmen would gather near their particular statue in order to meet, conduct guild business, etc.

I couldn't resist throwing this in--nothing like having a monkey in your view of the Palais de Justice!