Mussels in Brussels

Because I am currently sitting at an Illy Café with about two hours to kill before my train leaves for Paris, I thought it would be the opportune moment to write a blog post about my trip to Belgium!

            Before I recount all of the fabulous sheninigans I got up to over the weekend, I think it is important to preface this post with the fact that I really had no expectations for this weekend. Due to Casey’s visit last week, I hadn’t really researched any activities nor did I really know what Belgium was all about. I think my shallow knowledge of Belgium in addition to the group of girls I was travelling with made the trip one of the best ones I have had yet!

            Early Friday afternoon, I took a train from Gare du Nord to Bruxelles Midi-Zuid Station. The hostel was about a twelve-minute metro from the Brussels train station so round trip to and from my homestay was just about two hours—have I mentioned that I love travelling by train yet? Unfortunately, my friends who were meeting me from Seville, Spain were running a little late as their second flight was delayed. Fourteen hours after leaving Seville, Marni and Holly finally arrived in Brussels

            After settling in, we headed to the Grand Place to begin our culinary adventure. First, we fulfilled Marni’s request by heading to a frites (Belgium fries) stand. Now no one can say they don’t like fries, but I have always found them meh. They aren’t exactly a food to die for and you can really find ‘em anywhere. However, I must attest that Belgium frites are uhhh-mazing. I don’t know if it’s the fact that double fry them, I don’t know if it was the andalouse sauce that was slathered all over marnis battered potatoes or if it was just the fact that they came in a big paper cone that made the experience completely different than any other guilt-ridden fry-eating session.

When there were no more fries that were easily accessible to me within Marni’s cone, we began our quest for the main course, waffles. I mean we were in Belgium, it would’ve been blasphemous if we didn’t get any waffles as soon as possible! As we traversed through the city center we stumbled upon the Hôtel de Ville, Maison du Roi, Les Ducs de Brabant, Le Roi de l'Espagne, Le Cornet, Le Cygne, the Maison des Brasseurs, Le Cerf and La Maison des Tailleurs. Finally, we found our waffles—and man they were good.

After our ‘dinner’ we headed back to the hostel to decompress a little bit before indulging in another one of Belgium’s delicacies, de la bière. Due to a recommendation given to my friend Holly, we went to a bar called Delirium, which ended up having the Guinness world record for the greatest variety of beer available. With over 2,100 varieties of beer, I chose cookie beer, which was Speculoos cookie flavored (my absolute fav) and the others chose the more lady-like option of Strawberry beer.  With Marni’s goal of getting frites at least twice a day, we grabbed our cone of fries. In the cab back to the hostel I practiced my French with the taxi driver as the two Spaniards snoozed in the back seat—looks like their 14 hours travelling time had taken its toll.

The next day we got our frite-ridden bodies out of bed bright and early to get ready for our guided tour of Bruges, Belgium. After eating our complimentary breakfast (woot woot) we headed to la Grande Place to meet with our tourguide P.J. We learned that P.J. is a native to Brussels, he studied in Ghent and his first language is Flemish. Now that I think of it, P.J. kind of resembled an enlarged leprechaun. With his red hair and beard and rugby player-like body—he definetly seemed to be at ease while we traversed the fairytale-like town that was Bruges.

The duration of the tour was about five hours long. With P.J. leading the way, we walked throughout the city discussing the baroque and gothic architecture, the Flemish revolution, and the French oppression of the Flemish…oh and uh, chocolate and beer. Apparently it’s even better in Bruges than in Brussels, who knew?

Pictures hardly do Bruges justice, but with the canals, boat tours, horse buggies and cobblestone streets, it was absolutely breathtaking. So, if you ever find yourself in the Flanders region of Belgium, I recommend you taking a quick pit stop in what P.J. dubbed as ‘the Venice of the North.’

We headed back to Brussels, quickly freshened up and then headed out to cross off the last thing on our culinary checklist: Mussels. Yep, mussels in Brussels—it’s a thing!

The following morning we did a little more wafflin’, got our last look at Belgian chocolate and then headed back to our designated destinations.

Although was a really fun, relaxing and chocolate-filled weekend, I am very much looking forward to being in Paris for the next three(ish) weeks before I head off to my spring break extravaganza. Stay tuned for details from my movie and Macdonalds date tonight with Chantal!

                                                 Panorama of La Grande Place

     
                                                           Bruges, Belgium

 
                                                     Famous canals of Brugge

                                                                Belgian Waffle!