Belgium

Brussels hit me harder than I expected. I'd been told it was grey and bureaucratic — the EU capital, all glass offices and roundabouts — but the moment I turned a corner and the Grand Place opened up in front of me, that notion was gone. The guild houses are gold and stone and impossibly ornate, and the Hotel de Ville spire shoots up into whatever sky the clouds will give it. On a partly sunny day the whole square shifts colour every few minutes, and you just end up standing there longer than you planned.

The food was something else entirely. I already knew about the waffles, but seeing a counter absolutely stacked with every possible topping — Liege waffles piled next to churros, strawberries, hazelnut spread, the works — made it feel almost absurd. Then the chocolate shops: La Belgique Gourmande had a working chocolate fountain in the window and truffles arranged like jewellery. I bought way too many and had no regrets. The frites with stew were the kind of thing you eat sitting on a wooden bench and wonder why nobody else does it exactly like this.

What I keep coming back to is how compact and walkable the old centre is. One afternoon I found myself sitting on a low wall near Place de Brouckere, the Hotel de Ville spire just visible above the rooflines, graffiti tags covering the ledge below me, pigeons moving around on the cobblestones. It felt like a real city that wasn't performing for tourists — even while being full of them. A big fluffy dog was just lying on a side-street pavement like it owned the block, and the stone buildings around it looked like they'd been there long enough to agree.