Thanks for visiting my THIRD blog of Brussels! As with my blog in 2022 (not much to it but link here), I will start of by saying for a better(ish) overview of the city, refer to my post in August 2018 (link here) as although we were only there for less than a day, my wife and I did more touristy stuff than I have the past two times watching the football! Nothing to do with beer, obviously.
However, if it’s the tribulations of another short Wales away football match you’re after, I hope I can entertain.
Costs
As with Macedonia in March, my pal Peter sorted this out. As much as we’re a bit fed up playing Belgium, Brussels has to be one of the easiest places to get to for such occasion.
As we were travelling from London we agreed to take the car and park a 15-minute walk from St Pancras International at a cost of £60 each including fuel. An added bonus was a mini tour of London, going past Hyde Park, Harrods, Natural History Museum, British Library and Piccadilly Circus to name but a few.
We travelled Sunday morning to Tuesday evening and used the Eurostar to get across the Channel. The train cost £108 return which was great value. Prices do go up and down but it’s an enjoyable ride, with the ability to also travel to Paris, Lille or Amsterdam from London Kins Cross / St Pancras.
Our hotel, Hotel Expo was on the outskirts of the city, but importantly across the road from the stadium and cost £205 a room for two nights including breakfast, albeit the rooms were tiny. Can’t be far off a very good deal in Brussels and the location was ideal for after the match.
Other costs, general spending money on food, drinks, beers, luggage storage and the metro I estimated about another £150 so not too expensive at around £450 all in including the £33 match ticket.
Itinerary
Day One
Following on from the drive to London, walk to St Pancras, Eurostar to Brussels and Metro, we arrived at our hotel around 7pm. This gave us enough time for a short rest in the hotel and dump the bags before getting the Metro in to the City Centre for a late dinner.
I do wonder what brings tourists to Brussels. Obviously it is one of the main centres of Europe and has excellent transport links. I just find the place to welcome people for a day or so before they make their onward travels. The central streets are great for a stroll around for a full day, but activities wise the capital city of Belgium is lacking in my opinion.
For dinner, we cashed in on a reservation I made five months prior in JANUARY following a video from Cheap Holiday Expert! Restaurant Mozart (link) is based a few minutes away from the central square and offers all you can eat ribs for €25. Right up our alley after a long days travel. The ribs come in a variety of flavours and come with fries and the most spectacular jacket potato I have ever tasted, thanks to whatever sauce it was on top.
After just two and a half racks of ribs I was spent. The restaurant also serves their homemade wine that you pay for by the centimetre, but I passed on that opportunity to be fresh for a long match day tomorrow.
Day Two
I really should reconsider early starts when I have a day drinking ahead of me in future, but today I was up at 6am for a planned bike trip around the Atomium and parks that were nearby. I purposely chose a pushbike to get a bit of much needed exercise in, and spent a good 45 minutes aimlessly following paths around Laeken park, which was pleasant but not as picturesque as I thought. For some reason the whole park is blurred out on Google Maps, but I can assure you it was not Area 51.
Arriving back at the Atomium, I was content with my pedal and, straight back to being lazy, swapped my bike with an eScooter to lap around the park and back to the hotel in time for breakfast. Much quicker and much more fun!
Fun fact: The Atomium is regularly the top of most must-see lists in Brussels and one of Belgium’s most famous landmarks, originally constructed as the centrepiece of the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair. The balls look so small but each has its own museum or exhibition inside. I’m still none the wiser how you actually get between spheres as I simply don’t think I’d fit in those interlinking tubes!!
Fun fact: There’s was this weird copyright law around images of the structure, even if you take a phot yourself. For yours a specific Belgian Association of authors, composers and publishers claimed intellectual property rights of the images, that was only lifted in 2016. How they would police that, suing a teenager on a school trip from I dunno, Massachusetts, for lobbing a photo on his Insta is anyone’s guess.
We did intend to visit the Atomium this morning after breakfast, it’s about £15 to enter, but after a slow start leaving the hotel we decided to head in to the city centre.
Our first port of call was to show Pete where the Mannekin Pis statue/fountain is, along one of the maze of narrow streets. Another one of Brussels most visited spots, of a boy having a wee, which to be honest is completely underwhelming. A fun fact would be that he has over 1,000 costumes, but that pushing fun even for this page.
Certainly the focal point of Brussels is the main square “Grand Place” with some incredible architecture on all four sides. In 2018 we were lucky to visit during the a biennial event where the Grand Place is covered with a massive tapestry of flowers, but today we were treated to a few marching bands and selfie sticks galore. The centre piece of the square pictured is the gothic style town hall, and where the above photo was taken was where we settled for a beer .
As the waiter brought us our 11am beers, I had an immediate sense of deja-vu and immediately started scrolling through my socials and my 2022 blog post, and as expected, I was having the same beer in the same bar, wearing the same shirt as three years ago.
I did take some consoling over how much older I look in just three years, not to mention my heair (welling up just typing this guys) so the only cure was to pick up our match tickets from a nearby hotel and continue with the beers.
As for previous matches, the Welsh fans congregated in Place de la Bourse where there were a few bars and an Irish pub blaring out Cymru anthems. A loud, boozy, but completely friendly party atmosphere that presented no harm to locals or tourists.
After a few pints of Stella, remarkably cheaper than expected at €6 a pint, Pete went for his usual pre-match siesta whilst I met up with a few fellow Newport County supporters. When the queues got too long many people just popped in the nearby off-licences. I recall picking up 4 knock off Desperados and 6 alcopops in lieu of cider as the shelves were becoming increasingly empty!
Still, but 7pm it was time to catch the metro to the stadium, a good half an our away plus a walk to our entrance.
Given the queues getting in to the ground with 3,000+ other Welsh fans, I was pleased to have picked up a can of Stella for the commute with still plenty of time before kick off.
The game itself…. what to say!
There was a lot of confidence in the stands before kick off after an unbeaten start to Craig Bellamy’s introduction to management, although this would be by far the biggest test. Things did not go to plan as we were stuffed 3-0 inside the opening 27 minutes, just for Wales to score through a Harry Wilson penalty before the break to make it 3-1 at half time, a goal I actually missed to get a bottle of bloody water of all things.
The second half, or at least 37 minutes of it, was the most intense and enjoyable away game I’ve had watching Wales, noting I’m still a relative newbie who missed some of the epic matches at Euro 2016. Sorba Thomas and Brennan Johnson scored for Wales to make it 3-3 by the 70th minute – you cannot imagine the scenes and pints being thrown when the equaliser went in (some bloke actually fell from the second tier but had only minor injuries) under Kevin de Bruyne, the poor mans Aaron Ramsey, took advantage of sloppy defending on 88 minutes to give Belgium victory.
Final score: Belgium 4, Wales 3
After the game the atmosphere within the Welsh fans was one of pride and relative happiness. Looking at the Belgium team with names like Doku, Lukaku, Tielemans and Trossard it was a bloody good effort. I enjoyed a few more pints and some food in bars near the ground before the two minute walk back to the hotel.
Day Three
I’d had worse hangovers but still sacked off breakfast for an extra hour sleep in the morning, so by the time we headed out and popped or luggage in a locker at the Eurostar station I was up for another walk around.
There wasn’t much to do but to buy my wife some Belgian chocolates from the very posh looking Royal Saint-Hubert arcade, where if my wife asks they didn’t have anything under €100.
I had steak and chips for a stomach-settling lunch whilst Pete had a bucket mussels (no ta) and via a stop at a waffle shop, and a calorific sugar rush that followed, we made our way back to the station to embark on our journey home.
Thankfully the journey home was unproblematic and we arrived in Newport by 11pm. A productive 2.5 days.
I have promised myself that I will put more effort in to Brussels the next time. They do have loads of important EU buildings that I’ve only glanced at previously, and if all else fails there are a few football grounds to visit or a day trip to Bruges under an hour away. That’s for next time though.
Thanks for reading. See you next time for Madrid in August with the wife!
How Not 2 Life 