Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Brussels museums


The boys and I were sad to leave our morning waffle ritual behind when we moved to an apartment. We missed the coziness of our hotel with hot showers that worked and friendly doormen. But we kept up our exploration, visiting museums and cathedrals we happened upon,  in spite of our waffle-free mornings. I should mention here that we managed to accomplish our waffle goal for the trip. We had joked before we left that we wanted to have waffles with strawberries for breakfast, waffles with chocolate for lunch, and waffles with beer for dinner. Mission accomplished, we completed the waffle trifecta. I digress.

One of the museums that we visited had the terra-cotta soldier exhibit where we saw artifacts dug up from the first god emperor of China's tomb and reproductions of all the ranks of terra-cotta soldiers. It was very cool to learn more about the excavations of the 180-room, palace tomb with its rivers of mercury and 7,000 clay soldiers that guard it.

The city museum that we visited, in addition to city history, had a whole floor dedicated to outfits that the little peeing boy has worn so, at that point, we felt oddly obligated to go visit the Mannequin Pis. Legend has it that this little boy was always peeing on things which annoyed the townsfolk until there was a fire in the city center. When they were unable to put the fire out they called upon the little peeing boy who used his super peeing powers to put it out. For all the fuss made about him, he is really quite small.

Towards the end of our visit we were beginning to feel pooped but Aaron rallied us to go see Basilica Koekelberg. Finished in the 1950's, it is the fifth largest basilica in the world and he found it on Google Earth. He had seen photos from the top so he wanted to see the 360 degree views of Brussels for himself.

Click here for photos.

1 comment:

  1. The soldiers and cool to look at and a little creepy that he made them.
    What a wonderful life : )

    ReplyDelete