Belgium – Brussels and Brugge

We arrived at the train station in Brussels at about 2pm, stored our luggage (there are storage lockers in every train station – so handy when you’re traveling between hotels), and went on a mission to find lunch. We had read that the things to eat in Belgium were mussels, french fries, chocolate, and beer. We knocked out three of the four in one stop for lunch. We each got a big pot of mussels, an order of fries and a beer. The food was amazing!! Chris wasn’t a huge fan of the mussels; I thought it was all fantastic. After lunch, we walked to the Grand Place – the medieval central square of Brussels. The square is surrounded by a palace and what are now government buildings all decked out in gold! We checked the last of the four Belgian must-eats off our list here, with some chocolates from one of the many chocolate shops around the square.

From the square, we took a leisurely stroll through one of the more historic areas of town. We saw a few old churches, the old (and current) Hall of Justice, and the remains of an old convent partially buried under one of the streets. We stopped for the best food of the day – a Belgian waffle with strawberries and chocolate sauce. Why this wasn’t on the must-east list, I’ll never know. We ended our wandering at the city’s famous Maaneken-Pis statue. Chris was most excited to see this statue of a little boy peeing (boys – so weird). He was a completely disappointed when the statue was life size… as in about 2.5 feet tall!

The only thing left on our list for Brussels was the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, so we walked the few blocks to what we thought was the museum entrance, and then we walked a few more to what was actually the museum entrance. By the time we got there, they were closing. Good job us! We were allowed to walk around the entry way which had a handful of paintings and a really gross 10 foot high globe covered in beetles. Yuck. Since we now had a few hours to kill thanks to the early museum closing time, we found ourselves a nice little Belgian bar and revisited must-eat item number four… beer.

Eventually, we said a less-than-heartfelt goodbye to Brussels and boarded the train for Brugge. I booked our B&B in Brugge specifically because, in a town of medieval stone buildings, this one had been renovated in a very modern glass and windows style by its architectural engineer owner. It did not disappoint. The front door was huge – like half of a single car garage door huge - and the dining area where we had breakfast in the mornings had an entire wall of sliding doors that could be rolled back to open the room to the courtyard outside. It was pretty cool. After a quick look around, we found the nearest restaurant for some much needed dinner. We ended up at a place called Tom’s Dinner where we enjoyed way too much delicious pasta!

The next morning, we left our B&B and headed to the town square for a 366 stair climb to the top of the town’s bell tower. 366 is a lot of stairs, but the view from the top was pretty amazing. The best part was that the towers bells played their hourly concert while we were at the top. It was interesting (and loud) to watch the hundreds of hammers beat out a song on all the bells. After trudging down all the stairs again (down is much better than up), we made our way to the Half Moon Brewery for a tour. We tried to rent bikes on our way, but after our first attempt was unsuccessful, we decided to wait until later.

The brewery tour was interesting because most of the original equipment was still on display. The coolest thing we saw was a 20’X20’ copper pan used for drying various ingredients – that’s a lot of copper! We enjoyed our free samples with a lunch of leek casserole, soup and chocolate mousse. Chris was not a fan of the leek casserole. It was covered in cream and butter – how can that be bad?

Our afternoon in Brugge was spent walking through the beautiful old town from one art museum and church to another. We started in the Groening Museum admiring the work of many notable Flemish painters, then enjoyed a quick stop at the Church of our Lady to see Michelangelo’s statue Madonna and Child. Next, we walked through the Memling Museum. This museum is housed in the city’s first hospital and is home to many beautiful Flemish paintings as well as medieval torture medical devices. I think I would have preferred death over treatment with some of those tools. Stay away from my brain please. We wrapped up the afternoon with another, successful, attempt at renting bikes!

Our bike trip to the neighboring city of Damme came to a screeching halt as soon as we arrived at the canal surrounding the city of Brugge. A boat was trying to pass through the canal, so we had to wait about 15 minutes for the boat to pass and the draw bridge over the canal to come back down. Once we were on our way, we passed through 10 miles of beautiful countryside on a path next to a canal connecting the two towns. We stopped in Damme to take a few pictures by the town’s windmill, rode through the six streets that make up the town, and headed back to Brugge via a path on the other side of the canal. Before returning our bikes, we followed the canal around part of Brugge to see the three windmills located on the outskirts of the town. We spent three days in the Netherlands and only saw one windmill, but managed to see four in one day once we got to Belgium – go figure.

For dinner, we decided to try our hand one more time at traditional Belgian cooking, and it was somewhat successful once we finally found the restaurant our guide book had recommended (be thankful the US adopted a gridded street layout in most of its town). The butter and cream drenched fish was pretty good, but I don’t think either of us is anxious to make Belgian cooking a part of our normal menu. Well, maybe the waffles.

The next morning was the earliest wake-up on our trip. We caught a 6:25am high-speed train that took us from Brugge to Paris in only 2.5 hours. The train topped out at a mere 187 mph (don’t worry, we’ll go faster later). I had booked these tickets online before we left home and was able to get us first class seats for really cheap. We enjoyed the life of luxury with breakfast (including chocolate croissants), lots of leg room and great chairs. I told Chris not to get used to it, but I will book first class whenever the price allows from here on out!