Brussels and a glimpse of Bruges

Laura and I headed off on our Eurostar adventure to Belgium on Friday night after work. The Eurostar is definitely a preferred mode of travel – beats easyjet hands down. We negotiated yet another foreign public transport system and got to the hotel before going out for a look-see.

The Grand Place by night was pretty special. Very gothic buildings surrounding the square. Behind this are the narrow and winding streets where the tourists eat, drink and buy lace and chocolate. We toasted yet another weekend away at a great bar in the middle of one of these streets called Aux Armes de Bruxelles (v. famous restaurant attached to it). The rosé went down nicely as we mixed it up with some locals.



Saturday was a lovely day. We shopped up a storm at the London high street stores which were refreshingly cheaper, less crowded and provided a much more civilised shopping environment! The shopping expedition lead us down the main shopping strip, Rue Neuve; past the Manneken Pis (peeing boy statue); to Sablon where we lunched, wandered around the antique market, bought expensive chocolate (just 1 block!) at Pierre Marcolini and gingerbread speculoos from Dandoy; then on to Petite Sablon with its lovely Baroque square garden and cathedral. From here we headed back across town towards Sainte Catherine via some lovely boutiques on rue Antoine Dansaert (more shopping done here) and paused for our first Belgian beer for the day. On our way back to the hotel to ‘dress for dinner’ we stopped at Delirium for some trappist (made by monks) beer – not a bad drop either. And spotting cartoon murals on passing buildings and walls all the while.





Dinner was back down on Rue des Bouchers in the thick of things enjoying moules and frites before going to Place Saint Gery for a drink. We joined a couple of parties in a bar and chatted the night away….It was the wee hours of the morning when our night out took a turn for the worse for me. Sitting at a bar, I was distracted by a stranger while someone else took my handbag – a trick that probably wouldn’t get by Maxwell Smart – and so off to the police station it was.





I’ll skip passed the boring bits that include getting to bed when it was way too light, traipsing across town to the closed Australia embassy, replacing my tickets at Eurostar, falling in love with the UK immigration man who said I could go back to London, hanging out in the train station…and then catching a train to Bruges for the afternoon.



Bruges is a lovely little place – quaint European with cobbled streets – you know the one. Laura & I wandered around the town, its flea market, and took a little boat trip along the canals before heading back to claim our shopping bags and head home.



Could have done without seeing inside their police station but all-in-all it was a nice visit to Belgium. For a cruisier weekend away, I’d put it on your list.