Why we went back to Brussels (after almost writing it off)
The first time we went to Brussels, we almost didn’t go back. The second time, it became one of our favourite cities in Europe. This is the story of what changed — and it’s really a story about how we travelled, not about the city.
The bad first visit
Our first trip was a few hours on the way somewhere else. We photographed the Grand-Place (lovely), squinted at Manneken-Pis (tiny, baffling), ate an overpriced lunch on a touristy street near it (our mistake — the trap), found the area near Midi station grim, and left thinking: “Pleasant square, otherwise meh. Don’t get the hype.”
We’d done everything wrong, and judged the city on it.
The structural problem with a few hours in Brussels is that the tourist centre — the Grand-Place, Manneken-Pis, the immediate Ilôt Sacré around them — is a genuinely small area, and it’s also the area of the city most calibrated for people who have only a few hours. The restaurants are overpriced, the chocolate shops are tourist-facing, and Manneken-Pis is, yes, a small bronze statue of a boy urinating, which rewards about ninety seconds of contemplation before you’ve exhausted its offerings. The area near Midi station that we found grim is grim — it’s a transit hub surrounded by wholesale businesses, not a neighbourhood. We’d seen the worst of Brussels and nothing else.
What dragged us back
A friend who’d lived there wouldn’t let it stand. “You saw none of it,” she said, and reeled off a list — the Art Nouveau, the comic murals, the lambic breweries, the food in Sainte-Catherine and Dansaert. So, slightly grudgingly, we gave it a proper weekend.
The invitation was specific, which helped. A general “Brussels is good, go back” wouldn’t have moved us. What moved us was a list: the Horta Museum — the Art Nouveau architect’s own house in Saint-Gilles, preserved down to the door handles. The comic-mural trail through the lower town. Cantillon for gueuze. Sainte-Catherine for moules. Dansaert for the contemporary food and wine scene. These weren’t abstract promises; they were destinations with addresses, and they were all things we actually cared about.
The city we’d completely missed
It was like visiting somewhere new. We walked the Art Nouveau streets of Saint-Gilles and stood open-mouthed in the Horta Museum. We turned a morning into a comic-mural treasure hunt. We drank sour gueuze at a brewery that’s barely changed since 1900. We ate brilliantly, one street back from where we’d been ripped off the first time (best neighbourhoods).
The Horta Museum in particular was a revelation. Victor Horta designed the house for himself in 1898–1901, and it’s a complete interior world — staircase with exposed iron columns, skylights flooding the house with diffused light, every fitting custom-designed down to the light switches. It’s one of the most complete and personal architectural experiences I’ve had anywhere, and it’s in a quiet residential street in Saint-Gilles that we would never have found without being pointed there. Brussels has a habit of doing this: the extraordinary thing tucked into the ordinary neighbourhood, not advertising itself.
The comic murals were the other revelation. We’d heard of Tintin, obviously, but we hadn’t understood that Belgium has a deep, serious comics culture — the ninth art, as it’s called — and that Brussels has fifty-plus large-scale murals scattered across the lower town as a celebration of it. Walking the trail is a different kind of city tour: you’re following your curiosity rather than a prescribed route, and the murals lead you through parts of the city you wouldn’t otherwise visit. By the end of the morning we’d covered half the lower town and seen it all differently.
None of this is hidden, exactly — it’s just ten minutes’ walk out from where the tour buses stop, and you have to give it a day or two (overrated/underrated).
The lesson
Brussels doesn’t perform for you. It won’t charm you in an afternoon the way Bruges does. It rewards the curious and punishes the passive — judge it on a rushed first glance and it underwhelms; give it real time and it quietly becomes a favourite (is Brussels worth it?).
This is a genuine characteristic of the city rather than a defensive claim. Brussels is not trying to sell itself to you. The Grand-Place is magnificent, but the city isn’t organised around the Grand-Place the way a purely tourist city would be. The interesting neighbourhoods — Saint-Gilles, Ixelles, Dansaert, the Marolles — are real residential areas with their own lives that happen to be interesting for visitors too, rather than tourist districts that simulate local life. That authenticity requires some effort to access, but it pays off in the specific satisfaction of feeling that you’ve found somewhere rather than been delivered to it.
We’ve been back several times since. The grey skies, the understated centre, the slightly surreal sense of humour — we love all of it now. But we nearly missed it entirely, on the strength of one bad lunch and three hurried hours.
What the second visit teaches you about first visits
There’s a general travel lesson in our Brussels experience that’s worth naming. First impressions of cities are often unreliable, and they’re most unreliable in cities that don’t perform for tourists. Amsterdam performs — canals, bicycles, gabled houses, immediate charm. Rome performs — you step out of the terminal, you’re already in antiquity. Bruges performs, aggressively. Brussels doesn’t. It goes about its business in Dutch, French and a dozen other languages, and expects you to meet it on its terms rather than the other way round.
The cities that don’t perform are almost always the ones that reward repeat visits most generously. You can go back to Bruges ten times and have essentially the same experience, because the experience is delivered — handed to you. Brussels hands you nothing on the first visit. On the second visit you start to take what’s there, which is considerably more. On the third, it becomes a place you love in the specific, accumulative way that takes time to build.
We’ve been back several times since. The grey skies, the understated centre, the slightly surreal sense of humour — we love all of it now. But we nearly missed it entirely, on the strength of one bad lunch and three hurried hours.
So if your first impression of Brussels was “meh” — go back, and walk ten minutes further. That’s where the city we love begins.
