We started our trip to Belgium on the Eurostar- first class and very enjoyable! The weather (for a change) was unbelievable, it is so nice to see blue sky in our photos instead of grey. Our hotel was right in the center of the Lower Town and so nearly everything was within easy walking distance. We headed straight into the town square in search of food and were totally overwhelmed by the beauty of it. Cobble stones and baroque architecture stretching towards the sky like a picture from a fairytale.
We made a bee line for Fritland to sample some of Belgium's famous and truly scrumptious frites (chips) before wandering around the Lower Town looking at chocolate shops. We went to see the mannequin pis in his dodgy little outfit. We also found his poor little sister who was actually locked up and didn't even have her fountain turned on. When we returned to our hotel, very tired and ready to check in to our room we found out that it was still not ready, hours after our check in time. So we waited in the lobby (which was very nice!) until Dan got cranky and complained and asked them to give us free breakfast for the inconvenience. But they did better than that, they upgraded us to a junior suite! Dan is now a firm believer in the power of complaining.
On Sunday we headed across the street to the much loved Central Station to catch a train out to Antwerp. While in Brussels you can speak French, Finnish or English but Antwerp is in the Finnish speaking part of Belgium and Finnish makes no sense to either of us! Antwerp's central station is amazing and is actually perfumed with the scent of waffles! It worked on Dan, he was sniffing them out all over town! The two main squares are just so beautifu
l, it felt like I'd stepped into my own dream of what European cities looked like.The city gets it's name from a legend about a Roman solider cutting off the hand of the giant and throwing it into the sea, hand werpen (Finnish for hand throwing) evolved into Antwerpen which is Antwerp in Finnish.
That night back in Brussels we went to the most incredible little restaurant. It was so beautiful with lots of dark wood benches, big marble table tops and surrealist murals. We had the most amazing steak bearnaise, the bearnaise sauce came to our table in a little copper based saucepan! Dan vowed to never drink the same beer twice and ended up discovering one called Mort Subite (Instant Death) which comes in a bottle with a champagne cork seal! He bought some to bring home.
We spent our last day searching out the famous murals, including a Tin Tin one! We also spent a far amount of our euro in le Boutique Tin Tin before handing over our last few euros at Godiva.
Brussels
Antwerp
