Welcome back to another day in Brussels. In our last video,
we shared with you some of the main sights. In this video, we're going
to go off the beaten path a little bit and show you some things that we've heard about that are
a little bit more quirky. The body decomposes and lets off gasses, until...
Just a quirkier side of Brussels. Our starting point for today is not necessarily a secret,
but it's a beautiful view over Brussels at Mont des Artes. This is a great place to start our journey.
While you're at the park, before you leave, don't forget to take a look at the bells that are behind
me, with the clock. Each of the hours on the clock has its own separate figurine that would come out
when the music played. Now the clock isn't right so even though they're working on restoring it,
I'm not hopeful that we're going to hear the bells ring, because it's not five to
eight am - or eight pm. It's not even close to the time that it actually is.
This is also a good time to note that we have a little reveal we're going to do at the end
of this video, so make sure you stay tuned all the way to the end so you don't miss it.
Right outside the train station is this awesome Smurf mural on the ceiling, and it'll make you
do this, and this. You kind of have to do some acrobatics to see it, but wow it's so, so cool.
Beer! Oh, this is like all the best of Belgium. Look, here's waffles,
fries, chocolates. It's so hard to fit everything into one shot, but this is so cool. I must come
back and stay here. It really makes me look forward to stopping at the Comic Art Museum later.
This is one of the coolest things that we've seen in Brussels. All
the Smurfs are so much fun to look at, I could sit here looking at them
for a really long time...but we don't have time! It's time to go on to the next thing. Let's go.
Just a short walk down the road is one of the oldest shopping galleries in all of
Europe. It dates back to 1847 and is named is Galerie Bortier. It's not in as good of shape
as the one that we went into yesterday, but I'm expecting something a little bit more atmospheric.
Even though we're seeking out some unusual things today here in Brussels,
we still have to try some chocolate. The shop that you see behind me is one that
you're not going to find in the guidebooks. Although they do have locations worldwide,
there aren't any in the U.S., and it's not one of the major, major, major brands. This chocolate
store is known for working directly with farmers in the country where the cocoa beans are grown,
and they have access to some very, very rare cocoa beans. They are very well regarded by
locals here in Brussels, and I am super excited to try out their chocolates.
I forgot to mention, it's the building with all the hats on it, which is also kind of quirky.
As soon as we went in, we were given a little taste of what they do with
the cocoa shells afterwards, and it turns into this amazing, amazing drink.
It tastes like chocolate! But it's not! Oh. It was incredible. They do not sell,
I can't go in and buy a single chocolate, so "unfortunately", we had to buy a box. Let's
see if they are worth the hype. There's only one of each flavor so we have to share each of
them. Here goes, a half a piece of chocolate. Oh my god. [I think you took more than half!]
That's delicious. It's very, very smooth dark chocolate. Not overly sweet,
not overly bitter. They managed to strike the exact right balance for dark chocolate.
That's delicious. I kind of wish we bought a bigger box. Even though this place is known for,
well, it's colorful hats and chocolates, their macaroons came highly recommended as well.
This is pistachio. Only half! Only half! I only ate a third.
This might be the best macaroon I've had. The center is really soft and really creamy and
I can tell from Heather's expression on her face that if I don't give this to her quick,
we're going to have a situation.
That IS really good. Might be the best I've ever had.
For today's quirky brussels tour, we knew that we wanted to go to a museum that was not quite
fine arts, and so we've chosen for our museum today, a Comic Art Museum. I'm super interested to
learn more about Belgium's connection to comics, and I'm also hoping there's something about
the Smurfs here. TinTin is really famous, and many others, so let's go check it out.
That's a fitting end for the comic museum.
That was really neat. I'm glad they had Smurfs. We got to find out a lot
more history about them. Funny thing. The first time that we came to the Netherlands,
we had no idea that the Smurfs were created by a Belgian, and that they were so important to the
sort of Benelux region. There was this parade taking place and Smurfs went by we were like,
why are there Smurfs in the parade?? It's kind of neat to have that come full circle and see them
here in the Comic Art Museum. They had a lot of different displays about current relevant Belgian
illustrators, and non-belgian illustrators. They covered sort of the history of comics. It was
really interesting. It was really interesting and if you have time, there is a library that
you can actually go into and just read comics to your heart's content. Sadly,
Bill pulled me out of there, because we have other things we need to do. Let's go to our next stop!
I was taking a walk through this neighborhood the other day and I found this thing they called
a "clos". It sounds like a little courtyard, and if you ask permission from the right person across
the street, they'll give you a key. We got the key. We're going to go check it out. This is
the courtyard of the Clos. I'm talking kind of quietly because we are the only people in here
thanks to our key that we got across the road. The only people here, and there's benches, and
I can hear silverware so some people are getting ready for dinner. This is a really nice escape.
The guy at the information desk called it a "fake river" but there's actually water in it,
so I don't know if it rained recently, or maybe if it just doesn't go anywhere. There's definitely
water down there. If you're looking for a quick break from the crowds, this is a really easy and
free courtyard to drop into. If you're in the area, we would recommend it. It's maybe
not something I'd travel across town for, but definitely if you're nearby, stick your head in.
If you've been following us for any length of time,
you might have noticed that I love to stop and pet the dogs.
It's the dogs' lazy day here at the winery.
In our last video, you might have noticed a very famous, tinier than expected, statue. There is not
only the peeing boy in Brussels, but there's also a peeing dog, so I've got to go pet it, I guess.
I am happy to report the dog is life-size, unlike the child. Another perk to visiting the peeing dog
is that there are far fewer people here than the peeing boy. Did you know that the peeing boy of
Brussels theoretically has a sister? That's right, there's a girl statue, too, happily taking a pee
on the streets of Brussels. The boy gets all the press, but the girl's a pretty funny statue, too.
Make sure you check out the main square, because you never know what you're going to find here.
There's some kind of goofy game going on here. We thought it was soccer initially.
We don't know what it is. Everyone has a mitt. There's some little ball they're chasing around,
and the yellow team's kicking butt.
The quirky food stuff that we recommend for your DIY quirky tour of Brussels is Mary's Chocolate.
Now Mary's Chocolate was the first female chocolatier in Brussels, and also the provider
of chocolates to the royal family. If it's good enough for them, we have to give it a try. Mary's
Chocolate also makes some special chocolate - pink chocolate. It's really a chocolate! It's
not white chocolate, it's not dark chocolate, it's not milk chocolate. It is pink chocolate,
a completely different variety of cocoa bean, and I'm super curious to see what this tastes like.
I would say that the pink chocolate tastes just slightly of berries, and a cross between white
chocolate and milk chocolate. It's a very distinctive flavor that is different from
other chocolates that I've tried. It's really kind of fun to try something so unique.
For our next stop on quirky Brussels tour, we are somewhere that has really
unique characteristics and is probably something you didn't expect to see
in a quirky Brussels video, but that helps make it quirky.
We are at a site outside of central Brussels and it is not the gorgeous church you see behind me.
It's a cemetery. There are some really unique
things at the cemetery and we can't wait to see them.
These things on the ground are a hint to where we're going next,
and it's one of the most unique features about this particular
cemetery. One of the reasons why we're here. Can you guess what it is?
Oh wow, it's really big. Wow. That's right, we are at an underground crypt. It's a little bit
echoey down here. It's huge. This underground crypt is the only one
like it in Europe and it takes up around one hectare of underground space. It's massive. Wow,
it's very long, maybe two or three city blocks. We'll put the rough dimensions here.
In addition to what she said about being one hectare but it is really enormous. Since it's
the only one like it in Europe, it's easy for us to say we've never seen anything like this.
This crypt dates back to the late 1800s,
and at the time people were being buried in wooden caskets, which kind of caused a bit of a smell,
since this was underground and no fresh air got in here. They changed to burying people
in metal caskets which honestly caused more problems, because the metal caskets were
completely air proof, and as a body decomposes, it lets off gases, until boom. Yeah, the
bodies would explode. The caskets would explode, sometimes it would destroy the exteriors
of the crypts, and they have to be rebuilt, so honestly it caused a bigger mess. So, what
do you do? You have a smell or you have a mess. Well, I think they fixed it by putting air holes
into the caskets. No more exploding bodies, but unfortunately by the time they figured that out,
the crypts were starting to fall into disarray. For around 30 years these crypts were just here
below ground. They were a mess of cobwebs and plants and who knows what else was down here,
until the city started cleaning this up very recently, about 12 years ago or so. They've
completely renovated it so that we're able to see it and walk through it and pay our respect to the
people who went before us. I'm glad there's no more exploding bodies. It's really neat down here.
Remember the Galerie that we were at earlier today? Well, the fella that that's named after
is buried right here. His statue used to have a head. Maybe it's being restored.
One of the many amazing features of this place is that there's an original bronze cast statue of The
Thinker by Rodin. We didn't expect to see this at all. In fact, we thought the only original one was
in Paris. Some of the statues on these graves are so evocative, so emotional. Makes you kind of sad,
which is not really the feeling we were going for, but that's what it is.
Died at age 24, a soldier. If you decide to visit the cemetery, it's well worth
the ride out here. It's not very far from central Brussels - 15 or 20 minutes by metro,
and it's free to come into. There are free bathrooms just inside the gate, and
they're public free bathrooms which might be a first for us on this trip.
Last tip, make sure that you check out the hours for the beautiful church behind me because it is
closed while we are here, and it looks amazing, and it is the site of the royal crypt. They have
some posh surroundings that we are not able to have access to. Next time! Well,
we hope you enjoyed the quirkier side of Brussels. We mentioned at the beginning that we would have a
secret we'd say at the end. Did you catch it? Throughout the video you might have caught on
to it. The secret is, sometimes it takes us two days to film a one-day video. We have to go back
through the footage to check what we're wearing to make sure everything matches. This is one of
those videos. We ran out of time on the first one, so some of the scenes you've been watching
throughout this video are filmed on different days. If you have an eagle eye,
you might have spotted some of the differences, and comment below if you did, because they're
there. Don't forget to like and subscribe - we've got a lot more coming from Belgium.