Palais Royal - Brussels - TravBuddy

Once a year, after Independence Day, the Belgian King goes on holiday, vacates his palace, and opens it to the public at large. This is a good time to visit Brussels as it provides a good morning's worth of cultural enlightenment and slow-walking for free. On arrival we were pleased that there was not much of a queue to get in, and the visitors managed to keep a nice steady flow through the exhibitions thanks to some sensible route-making. The relatively poor upkeep of the interior of the palace would have been surprising if I hadn't already experienced days of apparent lack of pride in the Bruxellian's own culture. However, this only dimished the splendor of the building, and was made up for the interesting and beautiful artwork inside. Oddly, the last room added a little of the interactive to the tour as modern scientific perception tricks were juxtaposed to the fine and modern art preceding it. So there was a reward for every child and inner child after making it through the rest of the tour.