My Trip to Belgium – Part One

I love travelling, and I’m lucky enough that I have already travelled to so many exquisite, wonderful places in the world. Belgium is no different.

Belgium, for most people, is not very high on the travel bucket list. Most people prefer to visit the neighbouring countries of France or the Netherlands. However, Belgium is a must visit. It is one of the most beautiful countries I have ever visited. It is clean, green, a land of history, and kind, friendly people, the kindest I have met in Europe. It is a bilingual country, of about 11 million people, and is divided into two parts – northern Flanders and southern Wallonia. In the Flanders region, one speaks Flemish (6 million people), which is a dialect of Dutch, and in Wallonia, one speaks French (5 million people). Brussels, the capital city, is the only place where people are bilingual, and 90% of the population speaks French, despite it being in Flanders. In other places, people exclusively speak the regional language. The education, sign boards, everything are in both Dutch and French. It was also our base, and we travelled around Belgium from here.

Day 1
We landed in Brussels at about 7 am, but our trip was off to a quite frustrating start. There was a strike at the airport, and we had to wait two hours to get our luggage. Once we finally did get our luggage, we took about half an hour to reach our hotel, Hilton Brussels City, at Place Rogier. There, we were greeted by Matthijs, and he was one of the nicest receptionists that we had encountered. Before going to our room, we had a hearty breakfast and proceeded to our room. We had some time to go before our first tour, so we took some rest, woke up, got ready and went to Grand-Place/Grote-Markt, which is where our tour was supposed to start. We waited in front of a Godiva boutique, and it was very difficult to stop looking at the delicious chocolates at the shop window. While we waited for our guide, Avo, we took a lot of pictures there. Grand-Place is the main shopping area of Brussels, which was easily accessible on foot from our hotel. The square is full of restaurants, boutiques, and chocolatiers.

Finally, when Avo arrived, our first tour began. It was a chocolate tasting and historical tour, where we walked around Grand-Place and surrounding areas, learning about the history of Brussels, and also visited several chocolatiers, where we tasted some of the most amazing chocolates. Some of the choclatiers were Mary (which served a very unique pink chocolate), Corne Port- Royale (which is famous for a walnut praline), Pierre Marcolini (where we tasted a very unusual, but tasty, Earl Grey tea flavoured praline), Chocopolis (where I tried a raspberry flavoured praline), and several others. We even made our own chocolate, which was great fun. We had walked for about 3 and a half hours when it started raining, and we didn’t even carry umbrellas, since there was bright sunshine when the tour started. So we got a bit drenched in the rain, but it was fine. As we were walking, we saw many murals with Tintin comics painted on them. Brussels has about 56 comic book murals of this kind, which give a stark contrast to the architecture. Our tour ended where we started, at Grand-Place.

The varied types of architecture in Grand-Place itself is so fascinating, since it has Gothic, Dutch, Spanish and French style of architecture, all built during different time periods. The structure that stands out the most in Grand-Place is the town hall, which has a tower in the middle with the gilt metal statue of the archangel Michael, patron saint of Brussels, slaying a dragon/devil. In Europe, several cities have patron saints, who are said to be the protectors of the city. It is actually asymmetrical, and is similar to the town hall in Bruges. Another great thing about Grand-Place is that there are no cars allowed, so the only noise is that of chattering people. We took a few more pictures there, ate the greatest, cheesiest fries ever at Chez Papy, before heading back to the hotel, for a good night’s rest.

Day 2
The next day, we were up bright and early to start our second day of tours. We were heading to Bruges and Ghent, two little towns in the Flanders region. The tour bus came to pick us up at our hotel, and we headed to Ghent, our first stop. This place has many ancient buildings. A way of knowing this is seeing the colour of the stone. If it is grey, it means it is the oldest, and if it isn’t, it is fairly new (obviously). We roamed around for some time, bought little souvenirs and left for Bruges.

Bruges is the literal definition of a fairytale town. It doesn’t feel real at all. Little houses along the canal, cute shops, and even cuter animals, it is the place to be. For me, it was really hard to believe that people actually live there! It is so surreal. We reached Bruges at 12:30 pm, so it was lunch time. We had lunch at the Vivaldi Restaurant, which was a very popular joint. The food wasn’t the best, very bland by Indian standards, but it wasn’t horrible. The chocolate mousse that I ate for dessert was lovely.

After lunch, we went exploring. Bruges has a lot of history, and it isn’t as small as people think it is. The town has a population of nearly 300,000 people, which is huge by European standards. We took a horse-ride along the little streets, one of which is only filled with chocolate shops (it smelled amazing, you guys) and a lot of little shops. One of the shops, Kathe Wohlfahrt, is a Christmas shop which is open all year round and has the cutest little things! A must visit! Before it was time to leave, I had a lovely scoop of raspberry sorbet ice cream at Haagen-Dazs. Then, it was time to leave this beauty and head to Brussels. Once back, we found an Indian restaurant (as usual) called L’Everest owned by a Nepali man, ate the standard dal-rice and headed to the hotel to rejuvenate.

Part Two will be up soon!