Brussels is a city you ride into rather than through, and Avenue Louise is one of its grand approaches. The Hôtel Solvay stands on it, number 224, a townhouse that the architect Victor Horta designed in the 1890s for the industrialist Armand Solvay, whose family fortune came from soda production. Horta was in his early thirties when he started working on houses like this, and he was one of the founders of Art Nouveau. Here he gave everything a whiplash curve: the iron balcony, the stair rail, the stained glass, even the door handles. Several of his town houses are now on the UNESCO list together.
The house is not a museum you can wander into any day, and visits are normally arranged through guided tours or special openings, so check before planning around it. From the street you can still see the sinuous façade, the bay window and the iron work. It is worth a few minutes before you do anything else, because the rest of the avenue is a parade of shops, embassies and banks, and the contrast is part of the story.
The riding here is city riding, and honest advice is to take it slowly. Brussels has tram tracks, cobbles in the older streets, heavy commuter traffic and a low emission zone that applies to many vehicles, so look up the current rules for your bike before arriving. Weekends and early mornings are far more relaxed. The avenue runs from the Place Louise towards the Bois de la Cambre, a large park on the southern edge of the city, and a ride through the park and onto the Forêt de Soignes is a reminder that Brussels is surrounded by beech woods. Those woods are some of the grandest old beech forest in northern Europe.
For fuel, the city has plenty of stations, though they are scattered, and Drogenbos and Linkebeek on the southern edge are quieter places to fill up. Parking a motorbike on the pavement is a normal sight in Brussels, though rules change from one commune to another, so use marked bike bays when you see them. For something to eat nearby, a cone of Belgian fries, a waffle or a glass of one of the country's countless beers is never far away, and the cafés around the Place Louise are good for a coffee and a rest.