World Pride Amsterdam 2026

Sunday, July 26 Amsterdam Airport Schiphol The first delightful thing we saw as soon as we got off the airplane and headed for the baggage claim at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport: the immediate iconography telegraphing that it's local Pride season. I don't know if they do this every year or if this was special for World Pride, but this rainbow colored baggage carousel was very similar to the one we saw in the Sydney Airport in 2023 for that city's World Pride—and this one was even more pronounced. This might be a good time to note that, as striking as it was in Sydney to see all the civic engagement with Pride like I had never seen before, Amsterdam has not only been very similar, given things like long-legal sex work and drug use (in neither of which did I partake, for the record), Amsterdam is quite clearly the most progressive city I have ever visited, and likely ever will visit again. To say this entire trip has been special would be an understatement.
Saturday, August 1 World Pride Canal Parade Did I mention that Amsterdam's Canal Pride is entirely on boats? This easily makes Amsterdam's Pride Parade the most distinctive I have ever been to—and I have now been to Pride Parades in Seattle: Vancouver, B.C.; San Francisco; New York City; Los Angeles; Washington, D.C.; and now Amsterdam. All but one of them march in the street—Amsterdam's floats down one of their famous 600-year-old canals. And guess what else! The whole reason Amsterdam wanted to host World Pride in 2026: it's the 25th anniversary of this country becoming the first nation in the world to pass marriage equality. If you look closely at the boat/float in the above shot, you can see it on the sign: 25 YEARS OF MARRIAGE EQUALITY. This is indeed a thing to be incredibly proud of. Side note: I did not realize this until Shobhit mentioned it to our European Parliament tour guide in Brussels, but it so happens that Belgium, the one other country we visited on this trip, was the second nation in the world to pass marriage equality law. It happened two years later than the Netherlands, in 2003. So it's pretty cool that on this trip we visited both the first and second countries in the world to legalize same-sex marriage—many, many years before I even hoped to dream it would happen in the United States. (It happened in Washington State in 2012 and then nationally in 2015.) I don't know if the above float was the first one in the Canal Parade, but it was the first one we saw, and we got there right around the time the parade started, so it may have been. If not, it was among the first.
Hello from the Netherlands' first openly gay Prime Minister, Rob Jetten! Neither Shobhit nor I would have had any idea that was who this was passing by, if not for the straight, middle-aged couple in front of us who turned around and very kindly informed us. The man even commented that it's great how he posts to social media with his fiancé (Argentinian professional field hockey player Nicolás Keenan) a lot, because according to the guy telling us all this, "tolerance is going down," even here in the Netherlands and unfortunately many other places as well. Jetten was also the first Dutch Prime Minister ever to take part in the parade.
It came as no surprise that Canal Pride in Amsterdam took trans inclusion very seriously, and I don't think I have ever seen a more visibly trans-themed boat than this one—which was actually made, but all things, the Dutch-based (more specifically Utrecht-based) Rabobank. It therefore incorporated some financial puns into its signage, such as the huge one seen alongside the float here, or hand-held signs that read "trans action," but also more serious handheld signs, like the one held in the above photo that reads "talent has no gender," or even "1 in 5 trans people in the EU are at risk of poverty." I would say this parade was pretty serious about inclusivity overall, with floats dedicated to the intersex community; the deaf or otherwise disabled community; and the senior community—and those were just among the floats I saw; I didn't actually see the entire parade. The one thing I would say there was less of here than in the States was floats dedicated to groups of people of color, perhaps because rather than tracking by race, the Netherlands categorizes its population by migration background—and thus Amsterdam loves to boast that its population consists of "over 180 nationalities." But of course a ton of those are White. I'm not saying Amsterdam doesn't have ethnic diversity—you can just look around and see that it does—only that there doesn't seem to be a specific emphasis placed on it. The closest thing I saw to this was the Arbo Health Center float, which had a sign on the side reading, Work in Unity, Embrace the Community, and a blow-up balloon of a rainbow turning into a White and Black man embracing each other. (This was one of several blow-up balloons, incidentally, that it was fun to watch get deflated at the last minute before heading under one of the many canal bridges it would otherwise not fit to pass under.)
These guys were all standing right behind us at the parade where Shobhit and I spent the first three and a half hours, before we went back to the hotel to use the bathroom and rest for a bit—it was just a couple of blocks from here. The two guys in the middle, next to Shobhit, were visiting from Frankfort; their names were Daniel and Darius; the guy on the far right was a rare native of Amsterdam, and his name was Gaap.
It's the Pink Pope!
Another bank contingent—this time Deutsche Bank. And I must say, the people on their float had some impressive choreography and dance moves.
On the float for Dutch Netflix competitor Videoland—some seriously impressive knockers.
One of the famous canal bridges in Amsterdam—covered in hordes of people watching the Canal Parade. We heard they expected a million visitors to Amsterdam for World Pride, and we certainly saw Pride iconography—flags, rainbow coloring, official WorldPride Amsterdam designed flags, etc—literally every neighborhood we went into. Apparently there was no official crowd estimate made for the Canal Parade, though; the most specific reference I can find is "hundreds of thousands."
The parade started at noon, and as noted previously, we went to a spot that was relatively close to the start of its 3-mile (4.8 km) canal route. This parade lasts about six hours, though, and Shobhit and I started to get tired and wanted to go back to our hotel to use the bathroom and rest a bit. The parade began at noon, and we headed back to the hotel at about 3:30. About 50n minutes later, Shobhit still wanted to rest, but I wanted to walk the parade route up to its end. This proved a bit of a challenge, and took me nearly two hours to do—largely because, as I expected, the spectator crowds got larger and thicker the closer to the city center (and thus the end of the parade route) I got. Combine that with the very narrow streets of Amsterdam's Canal Belt, and there were multiple stretches of blocks where the crowd got nuts-thick, as was the case in the photo above. I was just trying to get a shot of that statue with the Pride paraphernalia on it, but the rest of the shot is fairly indicative of the chaos of the sardine-thick crowds I had to very slowly squeeze my way through two or three times.
Sunday, August 2 World Pride Street Parties What do you think? Should I get this outfit to wear at our next summer office picnic?
There were countless events for World Pride Amsterdam, which technically lasted from Saturday, July 25 to Saturday, August 8—we did not arrive until Sunday, July 26. Many of these events were paid, ticketed events, which tended to sell out, but that was fine; our experience with three different World Prides now (Sydney 2023; Washington, D.C. 2025; Amsterdam 2026) has been that there are more than enough free events to attend—such as the several Street Parties over the three days of the weekend when the annual Canal Parade occurs. Since Shobhit had not come along with me when I returned to walk the rest of the parade route (where the parade was so slow that I quickly passed the contingents where we left off, even though I had left for nearly an hour), I stopped and checked out a couple of them on my walk back to the hotel: the one at Beursplein (which had the best music and fun stage entertainment—fair warning, some stocky men's bare asses in jockstraps at that link), and the main stage at Dam Square. The first was where I learned you cannot bring water into any of these events, and I had not drank any of the tumbler of water I had with me, so I quickly chugged the entire thing—surprisingly easy to do after all the hours in the sun that day. Many of the Street Parties occurred on two days of that weekend, nine on Friday and ten on Saturday; there was just one, the Main Stage party at Dam Square, on Sunday. I returned to the Dam Square party with Shobhit on Sunday, and we actually went there twice, once in the afternoon and again in the evening, when there was a pretty spectacular show with women handing fire. Anyway, in the afternoon Shobhit bought a couple of beers just so we could get a couple of these commemorative World Pride cups, which I didn't even realize until we got back to the hotel actually had two different designs. I wish they sold more than just beer in these cups (they did sell cocktails, but would not put those in the cups), but I was still delighted to have gotten them.
Trans Made Market We did not spend a ton of time at the Trans Made Market, only about 20 minutes, but I'm still really glad we went out of our way to check it out. I loved that something like this was part of the World Pride events. The event hosted about 30 booths of trans merchants and artists, and we bought a delicious brownie at one, and really tried to buy a jar of jam at another, but they could not accept credit cards, only cash (and we never dealt with Euros in cash at all) or an app called Tikkie, which is the Dutch equivalent of Venmo. They said they could do PayPal, on which I do have an account, but I have not used it in decades and do not have the app on my phone, which probably would not have worked anyway as I only ever used wfi while in Europe, which was not available in Oosterpark, the park where the event occurred (about a mile southeast of the parade route). When we left, we passed a young woman just outside the park wearing a T-shirt that read HOT PEOPLE SUPPORT TRANS RIGHTS. I'm not even attracted to women, but I I would still say this woman was objectively hot. I don't know why I didn't stop to ask to take her picture; I'm sure she would have happily posed for one. Now all I have is this written paragraph to keep the memory alive!
Thursday, August 6 World Pride Village Again after three World Prides we have attended, there are certain things they all have in common, but with certain variations and local flavors. "Pride Village" is one of them, and to be perfectly honest, the Pride Villages in Sydney were the best—probably because they also doubled as street parties, and were much larger in size and scope. The World Pride Village in Amsterdam was much more chill and, at least on the first day we attended (these occurred each day Tuesday-Saturday of the final weekend of World Pride, but we were in Brussels Monday-Thursday of that week), somewhat sparsely attended. I still kind of liked the chill vibe, especially the wading pool with floaties right inside the main entrance. If you look closely in the above shot, you'll see that I am largely soaked—my shorts were not designed to be two different colors; one side is darker because I fell into the water, leaving only about a quarter of them dry, and about half my shirt got soaked as well. We found these three floaties that were all strapped together, and getting on them was a little awkward, so I slipped off at first and went right into the water. Had I known this would happen, I would have worn my swimming trunks. Anyway once I figured out how to stay on this balloon pegasus (a nice match with my Pride Unicorn T-shirt bought at Seattle Pride a couple of years ago) without falling off, lounging there for a while on a warm day was rather pleasant.
There was a small stage at the Pride Village, which pointedly featured local, Dutch artists. One was a popular lesbian rap and hip-hop duo called LIONSTORM, who informed the crowd they are a couple during their set. One was clearly a bit more butch and one a bit more femme, the latter wearing a revealing outfit (sometimes even turning around to wiggle her mostly-covered butt at the audience) while doing most of the singing and sometimes screaming; the former ended their set by jumping into the crowd and encouraging them to run into each other. Some of their tracks really weren't my jam, but some others had really great, danceable beats. Next, and pictured above, was Dutch trans singer Alice Olsthoorn, whose set I thought was fantastic, even though I could understand none of it as she performed it entirely in Dutch. But again, pretty great beats regardless of the language, and she even seemed to have surprisingly intergenerational appeal (that's going to be Shobhit and me in 25 years). The photo above also amuses me because that guy in the shorts was really into it, and dancing pretty vigorously when I took the shot. Side note! We had already noticed the guy seen to the right earlier, wearing his CLUB CONFESSIONS AMSTERDAM WORLD PRIDE MUSIC FESTIVAL T-shirt, where apparently Madonna did a 30-minute set, and we missed it! That said, it apparently took place at 2:30 a.m., and how 67-year-old Madonna (she'll be 68 on August 16) can handle that, I'll never know—to be fair, even when I was young I could never stay up that late. And I still don't regret not buying tickets to any of the paid World Pride events, and Madonna is very likely to tour her stunningly fantastic new album, and you can bet I'll go to that.
Saturday, August 8 World Pride March Another typical element of World Pride: it features both a Pride Parade and a Pride March, as separate events. In both Sydney and Amsterdam these occurred a week apart; for some reason in Washington, D.C. last year they occurred a day apart, on Saturday and Sunday of the same weekend. In the cases of Sydney and Amsterdam, though, this gave us time for a detour of traveling during the week in between—we went to South Australia during this time in 2023 to visit my Uncle David and his wife Mary Ann; and this year we took three days in Brussels. The Pride March typically happens on the final day of World Pride events, and the only thing to happen after the March finished in Amsterdam was the closing night concert, which we did not go to. We walked a lot on this day, as the March was not set to begin until 4:30 p.m. and we took a long walk around the Canal Belt first. This walk plus the Pride March was 7.4 miles; the Pride March itself had a route that stretched 2.5 miles (4 km). This was a very different route from the Canal Parade, this time actually occurring on the streets, and starting on President Kennedylaan ("President Kennedy Avenue") about 1.5 miles (2.53 km) from the outer rim of the Canal Belt, or 2.6 miles (4.3 km) from the center of it; and ending at Museumplein—which was where three of the initial museums were that we went to in our first leg of visiting Amsterdam. When we gathered near the front of the crowd for the Pride March, we happened to meet the guy in the photo above, Gert—he is from South Africa, and is heavily involved in InterPride and the planning of World Pride Cape Town, set to occur in 2028. InterPride is a collective of 375 Pride Organizations from around the world, they are where the votes come from to decide locations of World Pride events, and they would have been who decided to set the first-ever African World Pride in 2028. Of course Shobhit and I also plan to go to that, and amidst our many questions about it with Gert, we learned that they will not host World Pride during their usual annual Pride events as usually happens; in this case it would have been February, when we were told the weather is not as ideal; they have chosen to set this one in October. This actually reconfigures our long-term travel planning, because we had pushed ringing in the New Year in Sydney to 2029 due to how soon after December February is, but with World Pride Cape Town actually happening in October, we can pull the next Australia trip back to late December 2027 / early January 2028 again, which makes me very happy.
We also met a couple, named Vincent and Charlie, who told us they have been going to Provincetown, Massachusetts annually for many years—this made them a very good resource for us, as that is where we plan to go next year for our anniversary trip in June. We got a lot of tips from them, and may even get a better chance at booking at the Bed & Breakfast they stay at if we drop their names. They were also a big part of a group near the front of the Pride March who carried this huge rainbow Pride flag, just a portion of a flag apparently 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) long, and Shobhit managed to snag a spot helping to carry the flag along the entire route. This delighted him endlessly.
I got a lot of great photos at the Pride March, but I'll leave you with this one: a queer version of the European Union flag, which I really loved. I ran ahead a bit to get this shot, and I must have taken five or six shots waiting for the flag to stretch in the wind enough to get a sense of its design. It was worth the effort! As was, of course, everything we did for World Pride Amsterdam 2026. [posted 10:56am]

Brussels 2026

Monday, August 3 Eurostar It's our first time on high-speed rail! This Eurostar train was on a route that runs between Amsterdam and Paris, but we got off at the Brussels stop; between Amsterdam and Brussels, it only stopped at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, Rotterdam Centraal Station, and Antwerpen-Centraal (Antwerp) Station. The peak speed of the train on this route is 300 km/hour (186 mph), which is close to a third of your average commercial airplane flight speed. Bearing in mind the three stops aforementioned in between, the train ride between Amsterdam and Brussels is about two hours. That's a distance of roughly 110 miles (177 km), which therefore averages about 54 mph (87 kph). For a Seattle-local comparison, the Amtrak between Seattle and Portland is a rail distance of 144 miles (232 km) and takes at minimum 3 hours and 25 minutes, which averages 42 mph (68 kph). —That doesn't really sound like that huge a difference, come to think of it, but only at first glance: the Amsterdam-Brussels Eurostar train is 29% faster than the Seattle-Portland Amtrak train, but that's in the best of circumstances between Seattle and Portland, which is rare. The Amtrak train can be scheduled for as long as four hours, depending on the time and train that is booked; plus, Amtrak is notoriously plagued by delays due to having to share tracks with freight trains which always get the right-of-way, so these numbers in the best of circumstances should be taken with a grain of salt. Rail travel is far different in Europe, where tracks are built as dedicated to travelers exclusively. What a dream it would be to do the same in the States!—but, Americans just never want to make that level of investment in public transit infrastructure. Anyway, all this average-speed talk aside, actually riding on a Eurostar train is surprisingly similar to being on a plane—particularly the seating, which includes overhead storage for smaller baggage; small storage under the seats in front of you; charging outlets; and perhaps most notably, seatback trays and cup holders, not to mention free wifi. The biggest difference is that you don't have to check larger luggage—there is shelving for large bags at the front of the train car—and there is no security check. We boarded our Eurostar train at Amsterdam Centraal, the same station where their Metro transit trains go. It's just that Metro trains are on subterranean platforms, whereas Eurostar and NS Rail (the Netherlands' national railway) trains are all on the elevated platforms.
Aparthotel Adagio Brussels Grand Place This shot was actually taken from the 6th floor of Brussels' Muntpunt Central Library, which we will get to again much later in this email. This is an elevated view of our Brussels hotel, Aparthotel Adagio Brussels Grand Place, although our actual hotel is the section you can see to the right, clearly slightly separate in design from the section in the rounded corner closest to the camera. "Grand Place" refers to the historic plaza surrounded by buildings that range in age from around 500 to 600 years old. It was only a third of a mile from our hotel, but other notable buildings were even closer, such as the city's central public library. On the ground floor, you can see a large opening in that rounded corner closest to the camera. That leads to an inner corridor in the middle of all the adjoined buildings on that block, which many of the hotel rooms overlook.
Our hotel room was one of those that overlooked this inner corridor through the middle of the block, from one end to the other. We were originally getting booked into a unit on the second floor, but when Shobhit asked us for a higher floor, they put us in the unit on the top, or 7th, floor. We were slightly disappointed it overlooked this inner corridor rather than the street outside, but we made do. Our unit was on the top floor seen to the right in the above shot, three windows in from the left. (The wall to the left was not units of any kind, but just patterned with large reflective circles.)
Walking Tour Through our booking with the Eurostar train, we were offered a so-called "free walking tour." Shobhit went ahead and booked one, choosing a tour at 3:45 p.m., after our train arrived about 20 minutes delayed at 1:25 p.m. or so. It turned out our "free" walking tour was a bit of a bait-and-switch, because when I asked our tour guide, Loïs, if he was a volunteer, he basically said not exactly: the tour ends with us being asked to pay what we thought it was worth. He even commented on how it was kind of misleading because the umbrellas they carry to help tour-goers find them literally have "Free Tour" printed on them. And although he played it as though our small group worked out well for him because it would involve less effort, this clearly meant he would get far less in tips than had the apparently many more who booked the 3:45 actually showed up—but, the tour started with only seven people aside from Loïs himself: Shobhit and me; a straight couple with a guy from Italy and a young woman from Estonia, though the woman said she now lives in Brussels; and an Indian family of a man and woman and little boy who currently live in Ireland. The Indian family only lasted maybe a quarter of the tour, though, as the boy was feeling unwell and so they had to leave. I was shocked to discover this tour lasted two and a half hours, and at the end Shobhit and I agreed to give Loïs €25 for each of us (totaling $57.74 USD combined). We paid first, and the Italian couple then offered the same—I wondered if they would have paid as much had they paid first—which Loïs was quite openly appreciative of. In any case, Loïs was very good at his job, deeply knowledgeable, so much so that I wondered if he was passionate about Belgian history—it turned out, not so much: he told us he studied biology and really wanted to get into documentary filmmaking but needed a job like this for supplemental income. This actually made me even more impressed, because I really think that typically in the U.S. in the same kind of scenario a young person would not be very likely to be so dedicated to a job only taken for supplemental income. Loïs did share that he was 25 years old, and I will admit I found him utterly adorable—in large part because of how he always pronounced the word "architecture," with the first syllable pronounced like the first syllable in "Archie." ("Arch-i-tecture")
Brussels Town Hall The walking tour began in Grand Place, where stands one of Brussels' signature buildings: their Town Hall, completed in 1455 and with a tower standing at a height of 315 feet (96 meters), making it even today the 22nd-tallest structure in Brussels. (None of the buildings in Brussels are all that impressively tall, mind you; their current tallest building, an office building, stands at 492 ft / 150 m.) That said, Town Hall stood as Brussels' tallest building for more than 400 years. As Loïs explained to us, it was the only building along the four-sided perimeter of Grand Place to survive the 1695 French bombardment of Brussels during the Nine Years' War, making Town Hall the only building there older than about 330 years. Its facade and tower, while being the primary target of the French, were the only parts of any of the buildings to withstand the bombardment. The history of Grand Place that Loïs shared with the group was thus quite fascinating, including a period during the mid-20th century when the city was apparently so blasé about the site that they allowed it to become a giant parking lot. Loïs showed us a photo of a bunch of cars parked in it and I was taken a little aback by the sight. A citizen campaign resulted in the removal of parking spaces by 1972, but cars were still allowed to drive through until 1990. The plaza and all the surrounding historic buildings were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1998, and ever since, the plaza has only been open to foot traffic.
Manneken Pis There was a moment during the tour when Loïs told us we were about to see "the most important tourist attraction" in Brussels, and wanted to know if any of us had a guess as to what it was. None of us knew, and I said I had no idea, which Loïs said made him very happy—but, when he took us here, I said with recognition: "Ohhh." I should have known! I had already seen this mentioned in YouTube videos I had watched about visiting Brussels, in some of which people recommended not bothering, characterizing it as a dumb touristy thing that was not really part of the "real Brussels." It turns out that's not really a fair characterization, though, as the Manneken Pis has been in this spot in one form or another since 1619. It would seem the legend and lore surrounding this statue has long been so extensive that it has basically become the overriding symbol of the city of Brussels, to the same degree, or maybe even more so, as the Space Needle in Seattle or the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. The original statue has been stolen and returned and damaged and repaired over the centuries, but now sits inside the Brussels City Museum in the King's House on Grand Place, where it has been since the 1960s; the statue in its original location is an exact replica from 1966. Even more noteworthy, Manneken Pis (this literally translates to Little Man Peeing) has long been subject to over 1,200 official costumes, many of which can be seen at La Garde Robe Manneken Pis Museum. Loïs took us by the museum, but it was closed at the time of our tour, so we could only peek through holes in the grating pulled down over the window. We were informed that the city even has a sort of application process for designing a new outfit for his collection, and if they accept the proposal they will send you his exact measurements for sewing together an outfit.
Tuesday, August 4 Atomium Manneken Pis may claim to be the "most important attraction" in Brussels, but easily its most popular, which was high on my list, was the Atomium—a 335-ft / 102-m, habitable replica of an iron crystal cell, which was the centerpiece of the 1958 Brussels World's Fair (Expo 58). So, even though I have likened things like the Euromast in Rotterdam as that city's version of Seattle's Space Needle, this building is much more literally comparable in that sense, as the Space Needle was itself the centerpiece of the World's Fair in 1962. The Atomium is taller than Brussels Town Hall, but only by 20 feet (7 meters); it beat City Hall for the title of the city's second-tallest structure when completed. Shobhit and I had a booked tour somewhere else at 2:00 on this day, and we naively thought we had time to get to the Atomium and back comfortably beforehand if we left our hotel at about 11:30 a.m. What we did not know was that, once you purchase your entry ticket, you are filtered first through the exhibits in several of the lower spheres, which are accessed through the connecting arms on very long escalators, surrounded by flashing neon lights. Some of the spheres, which are 59 feet or 18 meters in diameter, have model and photo exhibits; and others are fully lit with neon lighting themselves. We actually kind of rushed through all of this, before we even realized how much more we should have been rushing—because we did not realize that this part of the tour ended with us being guided back down to the ground floor, to wait in a huge line for the single elevator that goes to the sphere at the very top. This, of course, was my primary objective to begin with, so I wasn't going to miss it, even though we waited in that massive line for a solid 45 minutes. Once we were up there, we were cutting it so close on time to get back to our next commitment that I whisked around in one single circle, taking 12 photos of mostly the city views over the course of three minutes before getting right back in the line—thankfully a fraction of the length—to get back down to the ground floor.
Royal Palace of Brussels The Atomium was three and a half miles north of our hotel, by far the farthest we traveled for any of our Brussels points of interest, and we took the Metro to get there; it took half an hour to get there and half an hour to get back. We were set to be only a couple of minutes late to our 2:00 timed entry at the Royal Palace of Brussels, but then I was relieved to discover it noted on our tickets that they would allow us in up to 30 minutes past the ticketed time. So, we didn't quite need to rush through the Atomium as much as we did, but I still got the photos I wanted, and we were glad to get to the Royal Palace actually pretty close to on time. A bit to my surprise, Shobhit seemed noticeably more interested in the Royal Palace of Brussels than he had been at the Royal Palace of Amsterdam, which seemed kind of contradictory to me. Both the Netherlands and Belgium are constitutional hereditary monarchies with largely ceremonial kings—indeed, both kings have been reigning since 2013—so, what's the difference? At first Shobhit was talking like the Royal Palace was more interesting because it's a working palace, but actually both are; I think the difference was functional in its presentation. The palace in Amsterdam felt much more like a museum of furnished rooms, whereas the palace in Brussels had far more ornate, grand halls to walk through. Plus, we got to take a selfie with Belgium's King Philippe, who isn't exactly hot but is way better looking than the Netherlands' King Willem Alexander! Okay, so it was actually just a portrait. Whatever!
St. Michael & St. Gudula Cathedral Here we stopped at St. Michael and St. Gudula Cathedral, mostly because Shobhit heard it to be the closest thing in Brussels to Notre Dame. Either way, it is of course among multiple gorgeous cathedrals in Brussels, and I wound up taking a bunch of photos in there. There was a live concert of the organ happening while we went in, so you can watch this video clip for either that or the moment when I almost tripped on a step because I wasn't paying attention to where I was walking while holding the camera: The first church we went inside, while on the walking tour, was Church of Our Lady of Victories at the Sablon (which may have contributed to the "Notre Dame" confusion, as the phrase means Our Lady, so this church's French name is Église Notre-Dame des Victoires au Sablon), and Shobhit and I did go back into that one later briefly as well, so I could get a photo of its famously stolen statue of Mother Mary in a boat, which has quite a legend attached to it.
Fritland Although we had already gotten recommendations from multiple people back in the States—including a couple of young Belgian men selling waffles at the Capitol Hill Farmers Market in Cal Anderson Park a couple of months ago—having Loïs at our disposal, he very helpfully wrote down several recommendations right in the Notes app on my phone for me: two Frite places; one Belgian chocolate place; and three Belgian waffle places. The first on the Frites list was a place called Frit Atelier, and we tried going there three times, and each time they were closed. But, his second recommendation, Fritland, was easily found only a couple of blocks from our hotel. This wound up being the one time we had Belgian fries during our three-day stay in Brussels. . . . They were fine.
The BeerLab Rooftop I wasn't even looking for a rooftop bar in Brussels, but we found one! We went out walking in the neighborhood of our hotel (basically the Grand Place neighborhood), and found the "Belgian Beer World Experience" in an old building three blocks away. There is another large plaza in front of this building, Place de la Bourse ("Stock Exchange Square"), which was created following the covering of the River Senne from one end of the city to the other, which was completed in 1871 (we learned during the walking tour that the river still flows, just through sewer tunnels under the city). The Bourse Palace, which faces the square, was the city's former stock exchange building from its completion in 1873 until 2015, and now houses the Belgian Beer World Experience, among a few other things like exhibition and meeting room space. Shobhit went inside to consider the Belgian Beer World Experience, which does include tasting, but because he knew I would have no interest in any "beer experience," he decided against it. The person at the ticket counter noted, however, that there was a rooftop bar that we could take an elevator straight to for free! So we went over to the elevators we were directed to, where a staffer was posted to scan a card that allowed us access, and in moments we were four floors up and at the "BeerLab Rooftop." The options here were still only beer, but I was happy to just walk around the outdoor seating spaces taking photos of this gorgeous city while Shobhit waited in line to order a beer. The photo above is one of those photos, and shows the street leading up into Grand Place only about a block away.
La Maison de Gaufres Keeping it classy with our first-ever Belgian waffle in Brussels! We took the advice of one of the YouTube videos I had watched and ate a waffle the way locals do—okay, not like we're a waffle version of Lady and the Tramp, but plain without all the fruit, chocolate and whipped cream toppings offered to tourists. This had only a light sprinkling of powdered sugar on top, with a tiny little, very thin chocolate placed over the middle, and having been cooked very fresh, it was fluffy and delicious. Anyway, this was at one of the Belgian waffle places Loïs recommended, called La Maison des Gaufres, which is French for House of Waffles. Shobhit tried to say that made it like our International House of Pancakes (Ihop), and I was like: I think it's a little different. Indeed the waffle at Maison des Gaufres was so delicious that we back again for a second one the next day.
Wednesday, August 5 Palace of Justice The Brussels Palace of Justice was yet another thing we only learned about while on the walking tour with Loïs, who had told us it was publicly accessible, so we went back to go inside and check it out on our own on Wednesday. Loïs told us that when it was completed in 1883, it was the largest building ever built—something Shobhit immediately challenged: larger than the Taj Mahal in India? Larger than the Egyptian pyramids? Well, it turns out this is another one of those hair-splitting "largest building" definitions, because it actually refers to to things: first, it was merely the largest footprint of a building ever constructed at the time; and second, the official definition of a "building" excludes things like tombs, which are otherwise uninhabitable, a kind of dumb distinction in my opinion but whatever. In any case, the Brussels Palace of Justice can still unequivocally lay claim to being the largest palace of justice in the world, with a footprint of 40,000 square meters (430,556 square feet); a dome height of 104 meters (341 feet—six feet taller than the Atomium); over 250 rooms, and 27 courtrooms. On the walking tour, Loïs noted that many different Belgian courts still use the building to this day.  
While walking through the Palace of Justice's cavernous interior, I found myself thinking of the huge, column-supported spaces seen in the Lord of the Rings movies. I also caught a glimpse of a guy standing in a court robe outside one of the closed doors, talking on his phone. He absently wiped his mouth with the jabot, or white neck doily, hanging from his collar. I didn't realize people ever used them that way, like they're napkins. Or was this guy just a slob?
European Parliament Hemicycle The European Parliament Hemicycle was one of the things I was most looking forward to touring—you know me, I love a capitol or legislative building—and it was another almost-fiasco, but turned out just fine in the end. I had originally booked an 11:30 a.m. guided tour in English on Tuesday, but on Monday I received an email that "for operational reasons" (I wonder if the scheduled tour guide got sick or something?), our tour was canceled, and so they automatically scheduled us for the next one that day: at 12:30. The problem there was that we already had booked tickets at 1:00 for the aforementioned Royal Palace of Brussels. I tried to contact the booking people at the Royal Palace of Brussels to reschedule, and after a few hours got an email back saying they were unwilling. For a little while there, I thought we were going to have to choose between the two, and ultimately I was leaning toward the Royal Palace because those were actually paid tickets, and the European Parliament tour was free, just with required timed entry booking. So, we went ahead with our Royal Palace tour and everything else we aimed to do on Tuesday, and then I booked a "multimedia tour" of European Parliament at 1:00 on Wednesday. We deliberately set out early to get to the Palace of Justice beforehand, but when we were done there much earllier than anticipated, we decided to head toward the European Parliament building so we would arrive right at the same time our guided tour had been scheduled on Tuesday, and see if they would let us join in then. I had to do so much in advance to book this tour, including creating a web account and uploading both of our passport numbers, I was very skeptical that this would work out—but it actually did! I had even tried to reply to the email from European Parliament to ask for a rebooking on Wednesday, and got an "undeliverable" message back. I was willing to settle for the multimedia self-tour, as it was far better than nothing and we'd still get to see the same areas. But when we walked up at 11:30 on Wednesday and explained that our booked tour the day before got canceled, the woman we were speaking to was just like, "Would you like to join the tour now?" Yes! She gave us little yellow "EN" stickers to indicate we were in the English-language tour, and we also had to scan our passports at kiosks that then matched with what I had registered online, and printed out little white passes with our names on them to wear. The tour group we joined was quite large, maybe around 22 people, but, much like Loïs on the walking tour on Monday, this tour guide, an Austrian woman named Laura, was truly excellent at her job—in her case, presumably, largely because of her previous experience as a journalist. Several people in the group asked a lot of questions, but Shobhit almost certainly asked the most, but I would easily have asked second-most. This is precisely why, if at all possible, I would say a guided tour is always the way to go, rather than a media guide on headphones that can't answer your potentially many questions. Laura was very patient with us, and we learned a ton of fascinating stuff on this tour. For example: the European Parliament is the largest employer of language interpreters in the world; there are 27 member nations of the EU but "sometime this decade" the 28th one to join will almost certainly be Montenegro (population 623,000—less than Seattle); the number of representatives each country can have in the European Parliament depends on their population but cannot be less than six or more than 96 (a limit currently held by Germany, Europe's most populous country); and the circle of 12 stars on the EU flag does not represent the 12 founding EU members as Shobhit assumed, but rather the "perfection" of 12 as a number. These examples only scratch the surface of all we learned, and I had a really great time on this tour, feeling incredibly grateful we were ultimately able to make it happen.
Royal Library of Belgium / Museum Between the Royal Library of the Netherlands and the Royal Library of Belgium, it would seem there is not much to see, in terms of libraries—except! Two things about the Royal Library of Belgium: first, they have a museum, which has an awesome exhibit about the earliest binding of books in the late middle ages, with several manuscripts from the Library of the Duke of Burgundy, from 600 years ago. Furthermore, regular tickets to this museum cost €11, but apparently this museum is free on the first Wednesday of every month, which this was! Score. Second, and this was what I naturally went there looking for more than anything, the Royal Library of Belgium building also has a fifth-floor cafeteria with panoramic views of the city. We climbed the stairs to the top floor that was accessible to the public (the 5th) and worked our way down as usual, but most floors, and certainly the actual library sections, were not accessible. We did not buy any food in the cafeteria, but we certainly walked all over the fairly wide outdoor seating space up there so I could get pictures. In the above shot, you can see the tower for Brussels Town Hall in the center-left distance.
Passion Chocolate Galerie Over the three days we were in Brussels, we went into a lot of Belgian chocolate shops, both among those recommended to us and others. It's not hard to walk into a random chocolate shop there and find the chocolates to be amazing. On Monday and Tuesday, Shobhit chose around three to come back to and do the actual buying, which we did at the end of our itinerary on Wednesday, our final day in Brussels. The above shot was taken at one of the shops we discovered on our own (and I should note that what we browsed barely scratched the surface of available Belgian chocolate shops), Passion Chocolat Galerie, which has a really fun, red-and-white decor inside. We bought a box of about 50 of the different chocolates here—it's what the woman in the photo above is wrapping up for us—to bring to the Family Vacation trip planned later this month. Fewer people are set to come to that Family Vacation than ever before, and the people not making it are going to miss out! There had been a different employee in the shop when we went in the first time, on Tuesday, and he was nice enough. But the woman in the photo above, who sold us the chocolate on Wednesday, gave us way more samples, and was so incredibly chatty that she even acknowledged it herself. "My husband is very very serious," she said, making a super serious face, "and does not talk much." She made hand gestures of yack-yacking to describe herself, and then added, "My husband says to me, sometimes, you can breathe." Ha! She was not originally from Belgium; if I remember correctly, she was from Albania.
Muntpunt Public Library It just goes to show, you never know where you'll run into a great quote by Madonna! This was at the Muntpunt Library, the central public library in Brussels, which was a block away from our hotel. Perfect quote for a library, right? I can't say that the exterior of Muntpunt Library was all that remarkable, but I was fairly taken with its interiors—in fact, between the central public libraries we saw in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Brussels. I think the one in Brussels was actually my favorite. [posted 10:44am]