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Big city sightseeing can be challenging with toddlers, especially in Europe, where sleeping quarters are small and prices are steep. However, Brussels is a fun and sophisticated, family-friendly city where you can have a great time with little kids if you let the sights, well... come to you.

Similar to the fun of sightseeing in Prague, Czech Republic, families who base themselves in Brussels' very compact, very charming old town can spend days wandering around, admiring the architecture and street life, without ever paying a Euro.

Toddling Around Brussels Historic City Center

Walking around the old town, whose heart is the well preserved Grand-Place square, should be every family's first outing. Grand-Place (known as Grote Markt in Flemish) is a stunningly large square lined with restored buildings that have earned it UNESCO World Heritage Site status. Radiating out from the square are the crooked cobblestone lanes that define the old town.

Families can wander aimlessly along lanes like Rue Des Bouchers, once the place to find all the butchers and now the lane of fine restaurants; or the Rue de Marche des Herbes (Herb Market); Rue de Beurre (Butter); Rue des Pierres (Stones); Rue du Poisson (Fish) and many others for a sense of how this prosperous medieval municipality was organized. Street signs are bilingual French and Flemish.

The Tourisme Information Bruxelles tourist office has good walking tour maps and following them -- in an unstructured way -- is what we've found the most fun with this age group.

Belgium is justly proud of its rich heritage in the field of comic books and graphic novels. Take time to show the kids some of the comic murals that decorate Brussels' major buildings; they will love the huge scale and realistic trompe l'oeil style of many of them.

The tourist office publishes a map done for the 2009 Year of the Comic celebration, with a walking route that passes 32 walls decorated with larger-than-life street art. This urban art project, now two decades old, showcases the work of Herge, author and illustrator of the famous Tintin series; but also Peyo, the inventor of the Smurfs; Willy Wandersteen; and many others.