Visit the Grand Place, chuckle over the Manneken-Pis, eat moules frites and drink cherry beer, buy chocolate and lace . . . these were just a few of the suggestions I received when I told people I was jetting off to Brussels for the day. It's all very well for them, I thought. How am I going to get to grips with the city in a mere day? And a short one at that, I realise, when my Ryanair flight arrives at Charleroi airport, after which there is an hour's journey by coach and taxi before I get to the Grand Place.
But the bored girl in the tourist office on Grand Place assures me that I can do a tour of the main points of interest in an hour-and-a-half if I just follow the red arrows on the tourist map. Unconvinced, but ready to be persuaded that I have time to sit at one of the many inviting outdoor cafes and dawdle awhile, I wander out into the sunshine and glory of the Grand Place.
Installing myself at a table in the shade (it is already extremely hot at 11 a.m. - obviously there are some cities in Europe which are experiencing a summer, I reflect wistfully) and ask the waiter to recommend something "typique" to go with my mandatory glass of delicious cherry beer. Eventually we settle on a waffle, which is warm and filling. (Price: 210 Belgian francs - that's practically £4, the exchange rate is currently 53 Belgian francs to £1).
All around me the Grand Place is bustling with tourists, flower sellers and men rolling barrels of beer across the cobbles. Suddenly a bride appears, resplendent in a cream silk gown.
Slightly giddy from drinking beer so early in the morning, but greatly refreshed, I wander around the Grand Place with my eyes out on stalks just like all the other gormless-looking visitors in shorts and sandals. The tall 17th-century facades are garlanded with statues and figurines, some picked out in gilt, peering at you from all angles. There are Gothic gargoyles, meditative priests, archers, men on horseback, and of course, lots of lords and ladies.
But time is short. I trip down the cobbles, past the horse-drawn carriages for footsore tourists, in search of the Mannekin-Pis himself. His cherubic figure is plastered all over the merchandise in the tourist shops. I confess I find it a bit sad that a little fellow peeing into a fountain is now the agreed emblem of the city, but obviously I have to see him for myself. Perhaps the real thing is stunningly impressive.
But no: blink and you'd miss the little chap. He's on the corner of Rue de l'Étuve, and for some reason he's fully clothed. Today he is wearing a white wig and scarlet coat, with short black trousers, long white socks and black buckled shoes. Apparently his outfit changes all the time, and he has even been seen in a kimono. The guide book has a spiel about how the Belgians like him because he is a "bold and insolent street kid". I'm sorry, but he is actually just a dreamy little cherub that someone has dressed up like a doll.
Somewhat disappointed, I pass more tourist shops with lovely bobbin lace and Tintin souvenirs as well as clogs and plates painted with windmills. It is time to explore the elegant Galeries Royales St Hubert, a 19th-century glassed-in "commercial gallery" which has apartments over upmarket shops selling interesting jewellery and designer clothes. There is a cinema and a theatre too.
Out the other end of this light-filled passageway and on to the beautiful Saints Michel et Gudule Cathedrale, which has just been cleaned, and sits shining in the sunshine. Victor Hugo called it "the purest flowering of the Gothic style", according to my guide book. Inside (mercifully cool) there is a marvellously over-the-top Baroque pulpit carved on the backs of a cowering Adam and Eve and lurking skeleton, with angels holding up a canopy, and, on top, the Virgin Mary stabbing righteously the serpent's horned head with the point of her long cross. It was designed in 1699 by HenriFrancois Verbruggen.
Out again into the now almost unbearable heat. I wend my tired way to the Parc de Bruxelles, following sleek Eurocrats in their suits and ties speaking a plethora of different languages. Everyone is going to the park for a bit of refeshing greenery during their lunch break. Young girls in short denim dresses, old ladies gossiping on benches, joggers, a children's playground - and further in, there is an outdoor concert which has attracted a huge crowd. Goodness knows why: they are playing a bland mixture of Europop and Eurocountry. As I leave I hear them breaking into Stand By Your Man in what sounds like Flemish.
I'm now in serious need of cooler temperatures and food, so I head for the Musee d'Art Ancien & Musee d'Art Moderne where, in the cafe, I gulp a quick plate of brie and lettuce (later, for the moules frites, I have noted a cafe off the Grand Place where it can be had for 380 francs). My hot, dusty feet exult in the civilised marble environs of the Musee d'Art Ancien (time constraints prevent me from checking out the apparently excellent 20th-century collection). I am a sucker for the oddly contemporary, naïve/surreal style of early Flemish art, so I'm in my element in the Breugel room (this museum has the best Breugel collection after Vienna; Breugel lived and worked in Brussels in the 16th-century).
"The Fall of the Rebel Angels" has to be the best, with a fabulous grotesquerie of screaming fish heads and mussels, floating angels with swords, and a whole carnival of nightmarish creatures. There are also the more typical Flemish village scenes, with chickens, carts, skaters on the pond, a pig being butchered and terrifically monstrous babies with adult faces.
A quick flash past the fleshy lovelies in the Rubens room and I'm off again, this time to the Petit Sablon garden, charming and shaded, guarded by a phalanx of 48 statues, some clutching ladders, others shovels, representing the ancient crafts once practised in Brussels. The Gothic Église Notre-Dame du Sablon across the road is reminiscent of the Notre Dame in Paris, with fabulous, jewel-bright stained-glass windows. Around the back of the church there is the Place du Grand Sablon, a cobbled, triangular square full of antique shops selling china, silver, sculpture and furniture: wonderful for window-shopping. Nearby is one of Brussels' distinctive art nouveau buildings, at ground level a shop selling elegant old chairs and old-fashioned toys.
I'm out of time now except to choose a typical souvenir back at the Grand Place. I am tempted by an adorable lace christening gown, but it is far too expensive at 15,950 francs, so I plump for a 250g box of Godiva chocolates (for 298 francs), which are manufactured in Brussels and exported all over the world. The friendly shop assistant describes how the praline filling is made: Turkish hazelnuts are roasted at 160 degrees and then mixed with sugar before being ground between two giant marble stones. Mmmm. Just hope my mouth-watering Godivas don't melt before I get them home.
