A British journalist, a reporter for the prestigious British newspaper "The Guardian", recently wrote a long article devoted to the Belgian capital that appeared in the paper's travel section. She described her experience after setting out to spend a week in Brussels and ending up spending an entire year there.
However, Hayley Long does not concern herself with the city's clichés and main sites: the Grand Place, Manneken Pis, the Atomium, chocolate and beer, and instead talks about Ixelles, the southern suburb where she lived. She invites us to join her on her favourite walk: around the lakes, a neighbourhood where you will find Art Nouveau and Art Deco buildings with "Le Belga" as a backdrop, a fashionable tavern-restaurant housed in the former building of the Institut National Belge de Radiodiffusion (INR), which owes its nickname "paquebot" (liner) to its shape, and the site of the extremely colourful market on Place Flagey and its surroundings. She does not forget to mention the famous figures in whose footsteps she followed, from the Bronte sisters to Audrey Hepburn and Edith Cavell.
The journalist also fell in love with the colourful neighbourhood of Matongé, the Congolese district near Place Saint-Boniface with its welcoming restaurants and cafés. She greatly appreciated the municipality's Museum of Fine Arts, which offers a very rich collection that can be visited at a leisurely pace. There it is possible to spend hours admiring a Toulouse-Lautrec or a Picasso without any risk of being disturbed. Therefore, Ixelles is well worth the detour and it is not just us who say so.
If you want to read the article by Hayley Long: https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2017/nov/05/ixelles-brussels-belgiums-best-kept-secret.
