Belgium - Brussels

The capital city of Belgium. We managed to get to the center by car, and got rid of it as soon as we could. Fortunately, Brussels has a lot of public subterranean parking places.

We first arrived at the Grand Place of course, chef d'oeuvre of Baroque architecture.

We then visited the Galeries St Hubert, also known as Galeries Royales. Sorry for the French, but although Brussels is located in the Flemish part of the country, it is in its majority French-speaking.

After a short visit to the Manneken-Pis, a little statue made as a tribute to a small boy who supposedly saved the city peeing on the fire that threatened it, dressed as if just graduated to celebrate the end of school year, we wandered around the city trying to find the famous comic walls. And we found three of them!


I also want to recommend to the travellers going to Brussels soon, a restaurant located at the end of the Galeries St Hubert, and surprisingly quite cheap. The specialities du chef are salty and sweet pies, and incredibly good! I particularly recommend the Tarte Forestière and the one with carrots, cumin and coriander.

Belgium - Dinant

Dinant is a Belgian city, located in the French-speaking part of the country (Wallonie).
It is built between a cliff, where the city old fortress dominates, and the Maas (Meuse in French), one of the main Belgian river. This makes the city very narrow, and confers to Dinant its particular atmosphere. It is also the native place of Adolphe Sax, inventor of the saxophone in 1846.

We arrived at Dinant around 5 pm, and everybody was outside to enjoy the promenade along the river. People were sitted on the bar terraces, enjoying famous Belgian beers or other culinar specialities as the mossels and French fries (some post about Belgian food and drinks will be coming soon). One of the main restaurant was called Chez Bouboule, le roi de la moule. Belgian humor!

We stayed at night in Profondeville, a village closed to the Meuse, in a camping quite hard to find but small and quiet. We tried before to stay in a camping close to Namur, but the abundance of odd old people and garden dwarfs made us flee!