Leuven - Brussels: a day of surprises - A Flanders Fling

May 30, 2017

Leuven - Brussels: a day of surprises

It was a short ride from Leuven to Brussels. I was rather expecting most of it to be suburbs and busy roads leading up to a city with a population of over 2 million. I was surprised that we had country roads and bike paths all the way to the city.

Leaving Leuven we had much nicer paths than coming. Due to a construction site we were temporarily thrown off course, but after that it was smooth sailing.

I wasn't unhappy that the weather had changed to cloudy and cool, at least for the time being. And to think, I had been so worried before the trip that we would have nothing but rain and chilly days. Now we were longing for a bit of cloud cover.

Fields of bright red poppies compensate for the grey sky.

Almost at our destination, we were taken totally by surprise by the park in Tervuren. We weren't cycling through suburban sprawl but a beautiful setting with lanes of old trees, lakes, a palace - and then it dawned on me where we were. I guess I hadn't done my homework because here we were in one of the places I had marked as a must-see and I didn't know it. This is also the location of the Royal Museum for African Art which we decided we would skip for now since we still had the ride into Brussels ahead of us.

Outside of Brussels in the commune of Tervuren is a beautiful park.

Interesting marking - we had never seen geese like this before.

Spaans Huis, or the ‘Spanish house,’ so-called because of the bricks used in its construction, is the renovated grain mill where the medieval and later inhabitants of Tervuren and Duisburg were obliged to have their grain processed.

The layout of the Royal Museum for Central Africa and surrounding gardens were designed to instill Versailles-like views to the visitor.

Riding through Brussels to our hotel wasn't bad but we did have to have our wits about us. I took a picture of the first-rate bicycle lanes as we entered Brussels, later on I didn't stop any more for pictures. I had to concentrate on traffic lights and turn-offs, cobbles and tram tracks. At times I had the feeling we were going around in circles and that we had already seen half of Brussels. Looking at our track on the map afterwards, I realized the route that the bikemap.net site plotted was pretty good, often with bike lanes.

From the park in Tervuren we enter the city on excellent bike lanes.

Made it! Relaxing and waiting to check in to our hotel.

Nice hotel, convenient location. At the check-in we were advised immediately not to leave our bicycles unattended out on the street. Locks were no guarantee that they would be safe. The hotel had a storage room where we could lock them up for the duration of our stay. This was, by the way, the case everywhere in Flanders whether we were in the country or in a city. Before we could even ask, every hotel showed us where we could store our bicycles safely for the night.

We had planned a five-day stay in Brussels, lots of time for R&R. The first evening we strolled to the historic center of Brussels, le Grand Place. We walked through different neighborhoods with distinct ethnic character and in the center many many tourists from all over the world.

Our walk to the Grand Place takes us through what looks like a predominantly Turkish and Moroccan neighborhood.

I thought I had done some research for this trip, but still I was amazed at the opulent, breathtaking architecture of the Grand Place. That was it for our first day in Brussels, and a good day it was.

Today's ride: 37 km (23 miles)
Total: 470 km (292 miles)

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