Saturday
Following our week in the South of France,
James, Mum, Dad and I headed for Belgium via train. For Easter weekend It was a
slow start, with a three hour delay to our departure from Paris to Brussels,
resulting in the whole day being about travel. Once we arrived in Belgium, we
caught a tram to our hotel, only to find they had made an error in their
booking system and we could not stay there. At first thought, this was the last
thing we needed, however, it resulted in an upgrade to a 5 star hotel with a
free breakfast, so we could not complain! That evening we walking into The
Grand Palace to see the beautiful old town hall, built by 1420 and sampled some
Belgium beer at the Delirium Café. The Delirium Café is famous for having over
2000 different beers, including some from around the world. The bar itself is
not so pretty, with kegs and tubing running all over the bar! It was beer
heaven. James tried two fruit beers at 10% alcohol content and the rest of ours
ranged from 4-10%. Following our drinks we had some moules et frites (Mussels
and Fries) at a local restaurant. Despite these mussels not being green lipped
and therefore, about half the size, they were still delicious. And considering
Belgium has a coastline that is 67km long, we were quite impressed to see them
being sold almost everywhere.
Belgium is quite a unique country, which
has a mixture of languages from being invaded over the years. 40% of the
population speak French, Dutch/Flemish is spoken by 60% and German is spoken by
1% of the population. It is said that you choose the language you greet the
person in, so to establish the language your conversation will be spoken in. We
found English to be widely used also which was handy when my rusty French
failed me!
After ogling the chocolate stores, we
headed back to the hotel for an early night.
Sunday
We joined a tour group to visit Ghent and
Bruge today, following a hearty buffet breakfast (with Belgium waffles
featuring!). Dad really enjoyed the bus trip and was interested to find cattle
grazing in paddocks, much like in New Zealand, after seeing the opposite in the
South of France. Ghent was a quaint town, with beautiful architecture and
canals running through part of it. I managed to purchase some Guylian
chocolates also. Following the guided tour, we headed for Bruges. Bruges was
well worth visiting, with this historic village being built around the canals
that run through it. It is often called ‘The Venice of the North” and inhabits
a population of 117,000 people. We walked the streets and managed to get
ourselves onto a canal boat for a 30 minute cruise which was lovely. James and
I managed to pick up more chocolates; 1kg for 12 Euro, which was a real
bargain! Do not ask me why we both felt we required 1kg of chocolate! Mum also
enjoyed the lace stores, where we watched some lace being made (I did not
realize the work that went into that).
Following our return to Brussels, we found
another restaurant where moules and frites were on offer before retiring to our
hotel.
Monday
On our final day in Brussels, we signed
onto a bike tour and were pleased to meet a young tour guide called "Titch". We
were lucky enough to be the only four on the tour, so we got to ask all the
questions we wanted. He has also spent a year in New Zealand himself, so we had
some common ground. We biked all over the city, to the Kings Palace, to city
gardens to the European Union offices. He took us to the most popular chip
shop, where we had a cone of double fried fries with various sauces and another
Belgium beer. It was a great tour with the occasional laugh where James realized
someone had swapped bikes with him-turns out Mum hadn’t realized her bike seat
had raised in height!
After the tour we headed out to the Anatomium-
a giant iron molecule (102m tall) built for the World Fair in 1958.
Following this, our time in Belgium had
come to an end, and we headed for the Eurostar, back to London.
