Brugges and Brussels in Belgium

Easter fell early this year, which for people like us who aren't blessed with little darlings, meant that we could, in all likelihood, go away for Easter as it didn't fall in a school holiday. So we decided to head to Belgium, the land of lots of yummy things but lets face it top of that list was Chocolate!

We decided to travel by train, the Eurostar to be precise and precise it was. There were no delays and we arrived in Brussels right on time on Good Friday. We then headed straight to Brugges (Venice of the North). We were met by a bitterly cold wind and no taxis to get to our hotel. I thought we should walk, thankfully Peter persuaded me it was too far and that we should wait. We eventually got to our hotel, which was very comfortable and within walking distance of all the main sites (read, chocolate shops!)

Our first mission (as always) is to have a walk around and get our bearings and find some food, not too much really. So off we went armed with our jackets, beanies and umbrellas. We walked to the main center square and on the way looked in every single chocolate shop we saw. This did of course mean that we were zigzagging across the road between them, just like all the other tourists. We had a yummy lunch at a delightful little cafe and then we headed back to the hotel for a cup of tea before dinner. The first night's dinner was in a quiet but busy restaurant, it wasn't too memorable apart from we both had fries with our meals, as well as potatoes!

Day two, Saturday we again had a walk around visited some more chocolate shops and went on a boat cruise along the canals. It was quite funny as it was raining and so most of the boats we saw were just a crowd of umbrellas and a hull. Ours however was obviously filled with a harder breed of humans as I was the only wimp with my umbrella up. Afterwards, it was of course time for a hot drink! The rain had stopped so off we went to Béguinages (or Begijnhof) which is a court surrounded by buildings, historically the inhabitants were nuns, I believe now they are still women only but maybe not nuns. Anyway, it is said that this court is beautiful in spring with all the daffodils in bloom, and we seemed to time that just right! After lots of rain dodging and view of Madonna and Child we purchased our chocolate and Easter egg and then back to the hotel to thaw and prepare for dinner. Our restaurant of choice that night was Restaurant Spinola and oh my goodness, it would have to be the best meal I have ever eaten. This place had two floors, and was about 3m wide. We were on the second floor, and the menu was in Dutch so we were completely lost. The waitress was extremely helpful and explained what every thing was on the menu. I was well stuffed at the end of it and I even ate eel! A little disappointed that we didn't have room for dessert :-( To top off this night, we left the restaurant and it was snowing! Of course this did mean that Peter and I had to have a snowball fight!

Easter Sunday and we headed to Brussels for that leg of the tour. We came out of the train station, again to a bitter wind and tried to find our hotel. This was more difficult, our trusty Google map didn't match out Lonely Planet map and neither of them matched the map outside of the train station. We choose one that seemed to match the lay of the land and went off in search of our hotel. There we were standing on a street corner trying to figure out where the hell we were and I said to Peter, what is the name of our hotel? He told me and it was directly in front of us with big banners, couldn't have missed it really. In the hotel lobby, I was most definitely in a minority, I was the only female and there seemed to be a lot of pairs of men, umm strange. Anyway, we dumped our bag and headed off for a walk. First stop was the Grand Place, my only word for this was Wow! Wow! and I said that an awful lot, everywhere you looked it was cool! We decided to do one of the self guided walking tours on our map, however it seemed to take us to all the seedy areas of town so we gave up on that and went on another stroll. I am lucky enough to work with a lady who is from Brussels so we went to one of the restaurants that she had suggested for dinner, yummy again, and you guessed it more fries.

On the Monday, we did the touristy thing and headed for a bus tour. We were accosted by the Green Bus Man, we made the mistake of taking a brochure from him and so he followed us up the street and kept saying get on the green bus, the green bus. By the time we reached the buses I was well annoyed with him, so we got on the read bus! He was most disappointed, but I don't like being hounded! We got off the bus at Atomium which appealed to our engineering brains. This was very cool and again it snowed like anything (luckily, it didn't ruin our view). Then it was back home to Reading... with our supply of chocolate.

Top chocolate tip: Try thin slices of chocolate on hot toast! Yum!

Photos are here