Brussels and Waterloo Tour

We were in Waterloo in September, but we had a car and stopped on the way into Brussels where we got rid of the car. You can get a train to Waterloo from Brussels and I believe it requires a bus ride from the train station. We spent four days in Brussels - actually it worked out to more like 3 days and an evening. One of those days we took a day trip to Ghent. We loved Brussels. It's really enjoyable to walk around the Grand Place and neighboring streets. The shop windows are great, and the Grand Place is just fabulous. The food and beer are wonderful. There are a number of museums. I enjoyed the art museum and the natural history museum, especially the art museum. The military history museum is also good if you are interested in uniforms and stuff like that. My husband liked the comic strip museum. There are some nice churches too. I mainly enjoyed walking around and eating and trying new beers. Ghent makes a great day trip. Bruges would too, although we stayed there rather than do it as a day trip. By the way, I wasn't all that thrilled with Waterloo. It has a monument on the top of a pyramid made of earth. If you climb the 200 steps, the views are very nice, but it's hard to envision the battlefield. We did not go to any of the museums because we were short on time, and the guide books I read didn't seem too high on them. If I had to do it over again, I would skip it. Actually I would have skipped it the first time, but my husband wanted to see it. I think he was a little disappointed.

Echoing the other poster, to get to the battlefield, you have to take a commuter train to the town of Waterloo, and take a bus from there. Or drive. For the price of admission, you can watch two brief films, one explaining the course of the battle, one showing clips from a movie filmed in the 1970s, visit a small wax museum, a cyclorama, and climb the Butte de Lion. In the warmer months, there is also a guided tour on a tram (like the kind you see in amusement park parking lots). The tour wasn't offered the day I visited, so I can't say if it's worthwhile. The site may disappoint if you're expecting something like Gettysburg. The actual battlefield and some of the surrounding buildings are preserved (the field itself is still part of a farm). But there are only a handful of markers to give you an idea of what occurred. I think that without the tour, if you want to get any sense of the flow of the battle, you have to watch the films and get a good look at the cyclorama.

Oh, and Brussels... I won't repeat what the other poster already mentioned, but here's a few other highlights. The Basillica of the Sacred Heart, to my knowledge, is the world's only Art Deco cathedral. Some find it ghastly, some find it fascinating. Count me among the latter group. Imagine St. Peter's in Rome done in the style of the Chrysler Building. Although it was designed for kids, I loved the scale models at Mini Europe! The nearby parks at Laeken are also very pleasant. Another good park for strolling is the Cinquantenaire by the military museum. Other than the Grand Place, Brussels isn't the most immediately appealing city. But with a little effort, there's a lot to see. Ignore the comments you may read about there being nothing to see except the Grand Place and Mannekin Pis- that's all those people saw because they didn't look for anything else!

Ditto the others on Brussels, and spending the night in Bruges as well. Wonderful time in both places.