Brussels, Belgium (Days Six and Seven): Royal Museums of Fine Arts
If you missed day five of our Christmas trip to the Netherlands & Belgium, go here.
If you caught the sense of foreboding at the end of my day five post, it will come as no surprise to you that I woke up on day six feeling as if a train had hit me. As a person who, before this, hadn’t been truly sick since undergrad, I was not doing well. My throat was sore beyond belief, I was full of snot, and I was clearly running a fever. I sent Ryan to the corner store to get some miraculous European cough drops (ones that actual make your throat feel better instead of just being sugary candy like American ones!) and Sprite, then hoped to sleep off whatever mystery illness had befallen me while Ryan took on our itinerary solo.
Enjoy Ryan’s photos of the infamous Mannekin Pis statue. He also visited the Choco-Story Museum, where he learned all about how chocolate was made and basically live-texted the whole experience to me, complete with pictures.
After a lunch of mostly fries, my fever felt as if it had subsided, so I donned my hospital-grade N-95 mask (which I didn’t remove until I was safely back in the hotel room later that day) and decided to try to do something besides sitting in bed—I was in Europe, after all. We walked through the rain to Notre-Dame du Sablon, a 15th century Gothic church, then picked out some more famous Belgium chocolates at Pierre Marcolini. Judging by the one bad picture I took of the church, I was still not feeling great.
Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium
Our main event was a visit to the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, which is a collection of museums, including the Oldmasters Museum, the Magritte Museum, the Fin-de-Siècle Museum, the Modern Museum, the Antoine Wiertz Museum, and the Constantin Meunier Museum. We got there fairly late in the afternoon, so we only visited the Oldmasters Museum and the Magritte Museum.
The Oldmasters Museum houses works by Flemish masters Bruegel, Rogier van der Weyden, Robert Campin, Anthony van Dyck, Jacob Jordaens, and Peter Paul Rubens. But I was most captivated by Hieronymus Bosch and his pupils, whose bat-sh*t crazy paintings really connected with me in my fever-addled state. In all seriousness, I was happy I got to see Pieter Brueghel’s The Fall of Icarus in person, as it inspired two of my all-time favorite poems, W.H. Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts” and William Carlos Williams’ “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.”
I found the surrealism of the Magritte Museum also agreed with me, though I was fading fast. We breezed through here as I struggled to remember everything I knew about Magritte (which was all learned from my teenage-self reading The Fault in Our Stars). On our walk back to the hotel, we briefly stopped to see the Royal Palace of Brussels, then it was straight back to bed for me.
Ryan’s Solo Adventures
The museum excursion turned out to be too much for me, and I was confined to bed/the shower floor the whole rest of the evening. Ryan went back out to walk the city, visit one last Christmas market, and ride a Ferris wheel all by his lonesome.
I did get to somewhat enjoy a chocolate-doused Belgian waffle that Ryan brought back with him after his adventures. (Peep the background of the hotel bedspread.)
However, I hardly slept that night due to the sore throat/congestion, and I woke up feeling even worse the following day. Day seven was meant to be a glorious day-trip to the picturesque town of Bruges, but an early morning train ride was clearly out of the question, and Ryan didn’t feel comfortable leaving me alone in a different city. Our original itinerary was meant to include the Grote Markt, the Historium VR Museum (who kindly refunded our tickets), a canal tour, popping into the Old Chocolate House for hot chocolates, and the Light Experience Trail. Instead, I can’t even remember what I did that day (though I’m sure it involved a lot of tissues, cough drops, and tears).
It was a rather inauspicious end to Ryan’s 30th birthday trip, and I learned a valuable lesson: get your flu shot, or it might ruin your European vacation.