Heading to Brussels with kids? This cosmopolitan city has plenty of choices to keep every member of the family happy. We spent just one of our four days in Belgium in Brussels, but I’d recommend spending two days there if you can manage it. Brussels also makes a great jumping off point for day trips: we spent the rest of our time in Bruges, Bastogne and Ghent! 

As we planned our trip to Belgium with the kids, our chief interests were located outside the city we’d planned to stay in. We had settled on staying in an apartment in Brussels because it was so centrally-located and we knew eating all the chocolate the city could offer was a priority, but other than that we were much more focused on day trips to Bruges, Bastogne and Ghent. To my surprise, however, I found myself really wishing we had more to explore Brussels after all. While certainly I think two adults could see a lot more of the city in a day than we did being in Brussels with kids, I’d still say you need at least two days to really take in the city.

That said, even if you only have one day in Brussels you can still get a good feel for the city.

Must-see Brussels with kids

• chocolate shops (hey, we have our priorities straight!)
• eating fries and waffles and drinking Belgian beer (see above re: priorities)
• see Mannekin Pis
• visit the Grand Place (day and night!)
• Les Galleries Royale Saint-Hubert
• AutoWorld

What we missed when in Brussels with kids

While we saw a few of the city’s iconic cartoon murals, I wish we’d taken the time to see more of them! They are playful and fun and see like a perfect activity for seeing Brussels with kids. For more information, you can check out my blogging friend Sophie’s post about the cartoon walk in Les Marolles.

One item that was also very high on our list was Coudenberg Underground Palace, which I really wanted to see but regrettably ran out of time to do.  The palace was built in the 11th century, but was destroyed by fire in 1731 and ultimately Royal Square was built on top of the ruins. Since then, the ruins have been excavated and now you can tour the “underground palace.” As a friend of mine who I trust highly recommended this, I’d suggest you consider visiting if you have the chance! It will be a priority if we get back to Brussels some day.

If we’d had an extra day, we would also have hit Brussel’s iconic Atomium, once called “Europe’s most bizarre building.”  (It’s in the top image on this post!). It was originally constructed for the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair, and is meant to be an iron crystal magnified 165 billion times. It’s now a museum.

Our visit in Brussels with kids

We got a bit of a late start on Tuesday because of our after-midnight arrival Monday (or rather, Chris and Fi did. Owen was up early and I never sleep well on vacation so we went and got pain au chocolat and croissants together). Our first order of business once everyone was up, however, was setting off for the Grand Place.

We got a bit distracted along the way, of course …

Note: this were actually really hard to eat with that tiny fork, which was not an effective tool for cutting the waffle. Nevertheless, we persisted. 

Waffles! Sadly I didn’t note the name of this waffle shop, but fellow blogger Cedric has some great advice on the best waffles in Brussels.

So, La Grand-Place. (Which I spent most of the trip continuing to refer to as the Grand Palace by accident, despite knowing it was Place). This is basically the central market square in Brussels, where the city’s Town Hall, King’s House (contains a museum now) and opulent guild halls and private homes came together. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and considered to be one of the most beautiful squares in Europe. Naturally, we opted to go into none of them because #priorities.

The purple thing is a scale model of Brussels’ Atomium, a bizarre building elsewhere in Brussels that was originally built for the 1958 World’s Fair. The building behind it is Brussels Town Hall. 

We visited during the day and then in the evening after dinner as well! It was prettiest in the evening, in my humble opinion.

It was decorated for Chinese New Year. Brussels with kids!

From there, it was straight off to some chocolate shops! I can’t remember if I mentioned before, but Chris spent time in Belgium in October with a friend. Consequently, he was well-prepped on where we were to go. First stop: Chocopolis.

Out front, a “chocolate” statue of an elephant. We were all pretty amused.

If you are headed to Brussels with kids, prepare for them to acquire a taste for expensive chocolate. 

We bought our fair share of chocolate, then gobbled it approximately five steps outside the shop. From there, it was off to Les Galleries Royale Saint-Hubert, a famous shopping arcade stuffed full of chocolate shops and jewelry shops. So you know, the basics.

Our destination was Meert, for exotic chocolates that included ingredients I hadn’t even heard of. Regardless, everything we jammed into our mouths was amazing. We also visited the tea room for coffee and what felt like the most expensive lemonade ever, which the kids refused to drink. Obviously.

If you go to Brussels, absolutely grab the mini waffles. They are basically like thin cookies with filling in the middle. We had cinnamon and they were unbelievable.

Pretty chocolate window in Les Galleries

We had intended next to hit the chocolate shop of Pierre Marcolini, another chocolatier who Chris loved from his last visit. At this point, however, it occurred to us that we needed to feed the children some actual food after a morning that included pain au chocolat, waffles and chocolates. Luckily, we were in Belgium so “real food” was deemed to be fries. (We also made the kids eat chicken, we aren’t absolutely the worst). We headed to Chez Papy, a place where Chris had eaten in October.

French fry robot, created by Owen. 

From there, it was a quick hop over to Mannekin Pis (“Little man pee” in Dutch), the symbol of cheeky Belgium. It is a tiny little statue — the many copies of it we saw in plastic/chocolate/whatever tended to be larger than the real thing!

Fiona wasn’t what you would call impressed. Brussels with kids.

By this point, it was decision time for the day. We were interested in two sights: Coudenberg Palace and AutoWorld. As you know, we went with the latter. No regrets! We opted to take an Uber to get there; while Brussels is an extremely walkable city, this particular exhibit was further than we were willing to hike.

The kids had a great time looking at cars and motorcycles, young and old. It was fun to see the progression of how the vehicles evolved over time, starting with their earliest days. I was especially impressed with how enormous the old vehicles were.

Ok, these two aren’t exactly great examples of the huge vehicles. But look at them! 

And there we are. This is a 1928 Packard Eight, Model 443, Series 4. This was my favorite even before I saw the sign describing it as the”favorite car of crowned heads and billionaires.”

Near the race car exhibit. Chris lost, can you tell? “If you ain’t first, you’re last.” -Ricky Bobby, Talladega Nights.

It seems a good time to mention that by the time we finished looking at cars, we had been marching the kids — who’d been up until at least 1 a.m. — across Belgium all day long. Naturally, Fiona was still wound up (HOW????) but Owen tried very hard to fall asleep on chairs at the small cafe inside AutoWorld where Chris and I had our first Belgian beers of the trip. Plans to try to hop back over to Coudenberg were abandoned, and we ended up Uber-ing back to our hotel instead for a bit of rest. After the four flights of stairs to our apartment, obviously. All of us were pretty thrilled about that.

So, not to get off topic too much here but one of the things we love about Sicily is the food. One of the things we don’t love about Sicily is the lack of diversity in the food. So, when we are in big cities we tend to seek out Indian, Thai, etc. to get our fix when we can. For what turned out to be out only meal out in Brussels, we opted to hit an Indian restaurant recommended by a friend who visited the weekend before us — Namaste Indian Restaurant.

It was excellent. I had naan, chicken samosa (didn’t even know this was a thing?) and vindaloo curry for dinner and it could not have been happier.

What was less awesome was Owen knocking over the world’s flimsiest glass cup and somehow managing to cut his finger in the process. Given he was incredibly overtired and blood is scary, the freak out that ensued was pretty understandable. The owners could not have been nicer, however. The one in perhaps her 20s asked him to come to her (amazingly he did?) so that she could take him for a surprise treat, and next thing you know she was carrying his gigantic 5-year-old self across the street to her family’s small shop to let him pick something. I ended up following along with Fiona because she didn’t want to be left out. It really reminded me of that Sicilian friendliness, though Chris is of the opinion that they were just hoping we didn’t sue. Cynic! All in all though, an excellent first day in Brussels.

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