Brussels!

Victor Hugo called the Grand Place (or Groot Markt) of Brussels "the most beautiful square in the world". I certainly can't name one better. The Belgies play this up, with gorgeous light shows playing all over the buildings at dusk, year round (I'll never forget darkness falling to the rising hum of Vangelis' theme to 1492 my first summer here). The main building in the top pic is actually the museum of Brussels, which we wandered through one afternoon that was pissing with rain. I realised that day that the first time I came here was before my re-enactment days, and that I'd never bothered to fill in the gaps in my knowledge of Belgian history. Soon fixed that though.

For example, the cathedral below, dedicated to the two patron saints of Brussels, St Michel and St Gudule, was built about a thousand years ago. I also learned a lot about the powerful flemish weavers guilds, who oversaw everything from the hours weavers and their families could work to fair minimum wages and protection of individual weavers' trademark patterns or designs. The modern union movement probably has no idea how much it owes to the Flemish guilds of the 1400s.In between gorging ourselves in cafes, we squeezed in two other very important museum stops in Brussels. The first was the museum of chocolate, which tells the story of European trade and conquest in South America, where choca was a bitter, savoury drink brought back to Europe as a novelty. I still think they could do more to explain why the Belgians are seen as the world's masters of this (the top chocolatiers in Australia mostly import belgian couverture for their choccies - in blocks of up to 20 tonnes each!). But the free samples are just yummy, and I even managed to follow most of the French commentary from the chocolate maker who showed us how pralines are made.

Being me, I had to ask a question - got through that bit too, albeit in French. Having spoken tourist Flemish to waiters and shop staff all through Bruges and Gent - even Ants was coming up with 'alstubliefts' and 'dank u wel's by the time left - I had lofty pro-flemish ideals of sticking to the language when we arrived in Brussels (which is nominally bi-lingual, but mostly french in practice, which pisses the Flemish off mightily). It didn't last - I'm not fluent enough in either language to maintain 'understand french' and 'respond in flemish', so I lapsed into French a lot. And English.By the way, don't ever forget that in Brussels, every street has two names - a french one and a flemish one. In some cases, that's okay - even a complete Anglophile could figure out that Avenue Louise is probably the same as Ave Louiza, or that the Grand Place and the Grote Markt are one and the same. Gets tricker the further out you go, as we discovered when we went out to the Basilica (the 5th largest church in europe, apparently) to see an exhibition of artworks and folio notes from Leonardo da Vinci. We hopped off the underground a couple of times before working out that yes, we were on the right line, headed the right way. Oh well.

Leonardo was worth the journey - and the 10 euro entry fee. Diagrams of hundreds of his inventions were there, from the helicopter to the water screw, as well as paintings, drawings and models that showed he really was a man before his time, of unique talent. Nobody, for example, has ever worked out how to replicate his model for the Sforza horse - a bronzed beastie of massive body and spindly legs that somehow would have stood up unaided. And, did you know, that the Mona Lisa was once almost certainly bigger than it is now - paintings of the painting by Raphael and others show that it used to have much more background, which has since been cropped away. It was a fine way to spend a last day, and lovely to see some sunshine.
Finally, Brussels wouldn't be Brussels without the Mannekin Pis (a name in flemish that the walloons don't dare mess with! ha!). This 500 year old statue stands about a foot high, its origins lost in legends(the museum of bBrussels tells the top 10 or so). He's totally unremarkable, but must not be missed.

I'm so proud of Ants for lapping up our 5 days away in such style. It was just the right time, and just the right amount of time - although there's so much more to see, and we both agreed that one day, we'll be back.