To the Forest - Day Trip

Park in Tervuren

This is huge park situated on the edge of Brussels.  The Parc du Tervuren - of course the name reminded me of the Belgian Tervuren dog breed but I did not see any of these in Belgium, only in Israel at the airport where they are trained for military use by the IDF and help to locate bombs.  

Vast lawns with a canal in the middle

The green space is easily reachable by tram 81 (again!) to Montgomery (downtown), with a switch to another tram.  

The 2nd tram actually takes the passengers several kilometres through the forest to arrive at the park stop directly across the street.  We went in looking for the African Museum Marco suggested we check out but did not find it immediately due to the size of the park.  

The park has forest, lawns and a canal, not to mention some unusual medium sized geese and is a great place to bike or run which many do - we just spent a couple of hours hiking around the various paths and lawns.

Also dog walkers and minders of grandchildren can be seen enjoying the quiet spaces. Apparently, you can also find meteors if you walk into the forest – something I only found out when reading about the park after we went there.

It's worth walking around the alleys in the park. The stag statue was located at the entrance.  In earlier times, the park used to be the King's "holiday house", so imagine the size of the gardens...

Oddly, located in the former king’s palace (file photo, not mine - the day we tried to go, it was covered by scaffolding) is the Royal Museum for Central Africa.  It is housed in the enormous ‘palace’ (above) in the middle of the park.  It was unfortunately closed for renovation when we visited.  

but we spent some time strolling around looking at the sculptures on the lawns.  The museum mainly focuses on the Congo and tells (part of) the history of this former Belgian colony.  

All in all, we enjoyed our afternoon in this beautiful park.