Eurostar (chunnel/train under the English Channel) for the weekend. We got into Brussels late Saturday morning (only about a 2 hour train ride from London), put our stuff in a locker in the train station and got another train to Bruges, which is only about an hour away from there (and we got chocolate with our train ticket). What we did in Bruges: we pretty much just walked around, it's really small town, but really lovely. Started at the city centre, then went into a church and saw what is supposedly remains of 'Christ's blood'. There was a line to walk up to it, it was in this glass vile thing, there was a priest wiping the vile clean after each person touched it--felt a little like we were in the Da Vinci Code or something as there was also a pamphlet about joining some Pious group. Then we walked north of the city to the lace museum, which was bit of a joke really, but we did get to see some really old women demonstrating how to make lace. Then we walked back down along some of the canals in Bruges, got a Belgian waffle and hot chocolate, and headed to the train station.
We went back to Brussels, got our stuff, checked into our hotel, and went to dinner a little Italian restaurant that was really good! Then went to a Haagen Dazs cafe for dessert.
Sunday morning, we left the hotel and went to the Sablon Area (upper city).
There was an antique market and Palais Royal, Palasis de Justice, a couple of parks, a really cool modern church, then we headed down to St. Catherine Cathedral, and there was Mass going on in French, which was pretty cool. Then we headed to the Grand Place--there were tons of chocolatiers, waffles, and fries (actually invented in Belgium I guess) on every corner. On the way to the Mannekin Pis, there was a biscuit (cookie) shop that our Belgian friend Thibaut recommended so we went, tried some cookies and bought some (they were really good). Right by the Mannekin Pis is a beer house (Poechenellekedlder), so we went in there for some Belgian beer. Then we headed over to the EU portion of town to see some of the EU buildings, which wasn't real exciting. At the end of the day, we had some time to kill so we went to Deilirum Cafe. The place has over 2000 different kinds of beer and is a total dive/tourist attraction, but still pretty cool. We had a beer to celebrate our weekend, and hide from the rain. Then, we headed back to the train station and home to London. Oh, and Eric wanted me to take this picture of his muscles in Brussels. See more pictures of Bruges and Brussels with the links on the right!
1 comment:
oh i loved Brussles when I visited in College. I went to the 2000 beer place too! My favorite was the waffles, haha!
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