Brussels and Ghent

We navigated the Brussels Metro and emerged from the Rogier stop right under our hotel, The Sheraton Brussels. When they heard it was our honeymoon we were upgraded to a standard room on the club floor. We had a quick drink before happy hour in the club lounge ended and then ventured out to find dinner.

We didn't feel the need for an elaborate meal so we went to a convenience store and bought a few cans of good Belgian beer (including some inexpensive Chimay) and a bar of dark chocolate. Then we found a kebab shop and got doner kebabs wrapped in pitas and a side of frites to enjoy in our hotel room. The rooms at the Sheraton are a bit dated but are quite large and had a good sitting area with a table for our dinner.

We noticed that English seemed to be used much more commonly to communicate in Brussels than in France, even though French is the official language. It makes sense given that Brussels is essentially surrounded by Dutch-speaking Belgium, and that it is the EU capital that English may be the most likely common language with any person you meet. At the kebab shop the menu was written in French, the staff talked to the customers in English, and talked to each other in their Pakistani language.

In Brussels the two things we wanted to make sure to see were the chocolate museum and the manneken pis statue. Since the chocolate museum is closed Mondays, and our first day in Brussels was a Monday, we took the train to Ghent to get a taste of Belgium outside of Brussels.

Though only a 35 min train ride from Brussels, Ghent is Dutch-speaking. It was very strange to suddenly be in a place where we did not know the language after 13 days speaking French and without any fanfare of a border crossing or flight.

The town of Ghent is quite picturesque with cobblestone streets and squares surrounded by tall brick houses with pointed roofs. The old town is all pedestrianized with only trams and canals cutting through.

We took a canal tour with an amazing driver/guide who repeated all of his commentary in English, French, and Dutch. He managed to say all 3 with feeling and personal touches tailored to his audience and did not at all sound like he was reciting a memorized speech.

Ghent has a castle right downtown that contains a museum of medieval armor and torture devices. The audio tour was not really a tour but was rather a movie that had different scenes that took place in the different rooms as you passed through them. The castle was cool but the most interesting thing about the movie was that it was loaded on an iPod touch.

 After a snack of frites with "samurai" (spicy mayo) sauce we went to the "Bierhuis" next to the canal that has a huge selection of Belgian beers. The frites (fries) in Belgium really are better than fries elsewhere.  They are twice fried which makes them amazingly crisp on the outside and soft on the inside.  If any of our readers get tired of their corporate jobs and want to start an entrepreneurial venture we think a Liege style waffle and Belgian frites shop could really do well in a well-off college town like Cambridge, MA or Georgetown, DC.

Every Belgian beer has a branded glass that is designed to enhance the flavor of that particular beer, so every bar stocks the glassware for every beer they serve and they ALWAYS serve beer in the correct glass. It is amazing how strong some of the Belgian beers are - one of the beers we tried was 11.2% alcohol (limit 3).

I had no idea ribs were a traditional Belgian food, but our book recommended an all-you-can-eat ribs restaurant nearby which was messy but quite delicious.

We returned to Brussels on the train tired, full, and a little tipsy.  Overall, we really enjoyed Ghent and would like to spend some more time in the smaller cities and countryside of Belgium at some point.

On our final day in Brussels we relaxed and caught up on blogging and mundane chores like checking bank balances and paying credit card bills. We then ventured out to the Grand Place to visit the chocolate museum. The Grand Place really reminded us of Marienplatz in Munich. We kept finding that Belgium often seemed to have some similarities to France and some similarities to Germany.

The chocolate museum was pretty small but offered a good demonstration of making molded pralines and gave us the opportunity to try small chips of all different stages and darknesses of chocolate. We tried cocoa butter, white, milk, 54%, 72%, and 80% cocoa. We both really like dark chocolate and were surprised that the 54% was our favorite.

We found the manneken pis, the statue of the little boy peeing. He was dressed in a WWII soldier uniform to commemorate the Allied liberation of Brussels.

We wandered around the Ste. Catherine and Halles St. Géry area and found stand-up seafood bars for post-work happy hour and some good bars and restaurants. After escargots and wine at Noord Zee/Mer du Nord stand-up seafood market bar, we had a good dinner at an Italian restaurant and then a fun night out at some local bars.

The next morning we headed back to Brussels airport for our quick flight to London. This concluded the longest stretch of our trip with no airplane flights (15 days).