Ashley Daley Photography: Traveling Belgium with Kids: Brussels

We spent our last full day in Belgium in Brussels (Read about our other two days at Villers Abbey and Bruges).

We loaded up the double stroller and headed to the Grand Place first. It was gorgeous! I'm not sure what I was expecting, but this blew away any expectations I might have had. We happened to be visiting in between Christmas and New Years so there was also a lovely Christmas Tree in the middle and a nativity. The buildings were absolutely spectacular though.

Brussels town hall

It wasn't too crowded so we were able to let our toddler get out of the stroller and walk around a bit.

We then walked around the city and enjoyed the sites.

Tintin was created by a Belgian artist

Our two year old wanted two things this day: to eat waffles and to eat frites (but not at the same time luckily). :) On our walk, we found a whole street where waffle venders all claimed to sell 1 euro waffles. We stopped and picked up a couple (only the plain ones are actually 1 euro, but still delicious!) and ate while we continued to wander through the city.

Around the corner from all the waffles shops, we found Manneken Pis. The original statue was from the 1600's (and can be found in a museum in the Grand Place). This one is from the 1960's. There are many legends of how this statue came about. A couple of stories are about a child getting lost in the city and being found peeing in the street while others relate it back to various war stories that end with winning the war due to a child peeing on something (troops, explosives, etc.).

While he wasn't dressed up at all during our visit, certain times of the year, he'll wear different costumes.

When we continued our walk, we found the most charming toy store ever! It's called The Grasshopper and I highly recommend stopping in if you have children.

They had shelves full of whimsical toys and games. London and even Adeline both enjoyed seeing everything. It was also a nice break for London to be able to get out and play for a bit.

We got each of the girls souvenirs from here. London got some pretty little finger puppets of a king, princess, knight, and dragon and Adeline got some little fish bath toys.

On the top shelf on the right, you can see the finger puppets that we bought.

We enjoyed walking around the city and seeing all the buildings and sites. There was also a Christmas Market going on that we wandered through and enjoyed seeing everything.

In the Christmas Market, we found the coolest carousel. I wasn't able to find information about it anywhere online, but I think it was built back in the 1990's maybe (Aaron asked someone and I think that's what he was told...). Anyway, it had all of these intricate animals that kids could ride on and also make move. Some were at ground level, but a great deal of them were above and had ladders to climb up to them.

We played it safe and had London ride in a little airplane. Still really neat and she loved it.

Brussels was a great city to wander around. It was very stroller friendly and we loved walking around for the day! It was a wonderful way to spend our last day in Belgium and we hope to make it back out there sometime. We also greatly appreciated our friend, Quentin, showing us all the sites and inviting us to stay with his family. Everything was lovely and we all had a great time!