Grand Place, Brussels

All the guidebooks would have you believe that there is very little to see as a tourist in Brussels, as the medieval city was leveled in the 18th century in order to build the spanking new capital city.  We did not see much of the city on our recent and brief stay, but the 'new' buildings they built are really impressive.

I did not get a really good picture of the whole square, nor did I find one on line--which is too bad because it is hard to describe how truly grand the Grand Palace really is.  You can enter it from many sides, and it opens onto an enormous open area.  At night there are many people sitting in circles on the brick pavement with food and beverages, lounging in the shadows of these great buildings.  It is a very social place to be, with four entirely different architectural styles on each side of the square and seemingly no rhyme or reason as to why one side is gothic and antoher is in an old B elgium style, and everything in between.  We visited the Grand Place on several occasions over a couple of days and found it to be fun, relaxing and quite beautiful in an over the top kind of way.