See here for more blogs on this, and other, comics trips.
It's that time of year again when I hop on the Eurostar and cross (well go under) the channel to the continent for a holiday with our European cousins. My wife and I loved our last trip to Belgium so much, we decided to head back - albeit to different towns and cities. Given Brussels is arguably the home of Franco-Belgium comics (Angoulême might disagree), the trip obviously had to feature the 9th art extensively - and it did! Incidentally, the cities and towns we visited, and Belgium in general, are absolutely delightful, and I would recommend a visit regardless of your interest level in comics - particularly if you like beer, mussels, and waffles! Our trip took in the national capital Brussels, the capital of the Walloon district Namur, and the beautiful small town of Dinant (which won't feature here as there was no comic-related visits, though it is the home of Alfanso Sax the inventor of the saxophone, and they're not shy about letting you know the fact). Given them number of photos I'm sharing, I'll break this down into a few blogs to make it more manageable (for you and for me!)
As befitting its capital of comics status, there are numerous artworks adorning the buildings of Brussels. You can find a list of the murals and suggested tour from the Visit Brussels website here, and you can also handily import the suggested route into Google Maps. We tied our tour in with a selection of bars we wanted to visit, and this meant we got to see lots of the city on our journey. However, I discovered after we got home that the website only includes some of the murals, and there's plenty more than we didn't get to see!
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| Ric Hochet from the comics of the same name, hangs from the roof in one of the best uses of the building as canvas in the tour. |
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| Tintin and Captain Haddock escape down an artfully drawn fire escape. The mural is perfectly placed next to the comic shop Moule à Gaufres. |
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| Victor Sackville, the eponymous British spy overlooks a crossroads with plenty of bars and restaurants. |
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| Le Passage, which doesn't really need translating! A scene from the Obscure Cities series, which influenced me picking up one of the collections (see later blog). |
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| Out in the Street, located in the gay area, celebrates the Brussels LGBTQ+ scene. |
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| Monsieur Jean in a typical Brussels setting, although the trams have been updated somewhat! |
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| Froud and Stouf, the two blue dogs bottom right, bring some humour and inventive use of the window space. |
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| The swashbuckling Scorpion, overlooks a street just round the corner from the impressive St Michael & St Gudula Cathedral |
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| Broussaille, on the right, stars in the first ever Brussels comics mural dating back to 1991. |
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| The infamous Viking warrior, Thorgal, in a beautifully rendered mural. |
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| Characters from The Adventures of Nero bring a bit of the countryside to inner city Brussels. |
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| Kinky and Cosy causing havoc as usual, in the Belgian capital. |
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The hapless Gaston hitting a passerby with his yo-yo from an upper story window. |
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The tricky to photograph Smurfs mural covers the entire ceiling of a tunnel, near the Brussels Comics Figurines Museum (which alas we didn't have time to visit)
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The first part of our stay in Brussels was spent in the Radisson Red hotel. Perfectly situated next the EU Parliament and a stop for regular buses that run a circular route of the city centre. We decided to stay here after our stay in the Glasgow Radisson Red, which was itself influenced by the Frank Quitely artwork throughout the hotel (see here). Sure enough, the Brussels branch didn't disappoint on the art front either - here are a few pics I took of our stay there. The final image is on the wall of the Brussel-Luxemburg train/metro station next to the hotel.
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