Belgium - March 2009
by kateThat’s right - 2 chocolate countries in 2 weekends. Graeme prefers Swiss chocolate, I prefer Belgian, Lily doesn’t get to have chocolate yet…
Saturday 21 March
It was so hard to wake up that we almost got to our second/backup alarm time, meaning we had to get dressed and leave in a big hurry. Thankfully, we made it to St Pancras international at exactly the right time to go straight through and onto the train and then we were on the Eurostar headed for Brussels. Once in Brussels, we were straight onto another train to Brugge.
Got ourselves a map from a little dispenser near the tourist information at the station (it cost us 50c and meant we had to buy some lollies to get change, but way faster than queueing at the tourist info) and then wandered into the city. We were glad we’d brought a stroller, but wish our big one was more compact because the little one was all over the place on the cobbled streets and walkways. Wandered through Brugge, which is full of very cool buildings, plus a generally beautiful place with canals and lots of old-world charm.
Ended up in big, main Markt square and had lunch there… well we went and bought sandwiches away from the square and then brought them back and sat in the square to eat - a much cheaper option. Once we’d had lunch, Kate checked out the haberdashery store we’d spotted while Graeme queued for the ATM (there seemed to be very few and the first one we found wouldn’t take our bankcard). Kate went and checked out some other stuff, including a Tintin shop, which was kind of cool, but also a bit insane, while Graeme continued to queue. Finally, he got some cash and we headed to our hotel via a walk through a park.
We checked into the hotel, used toilet and suitable baby-changing surface then back out (we seem to do this a lot - it’s often hard to find public amenities). After being in Belgium almost a whole day, we finally bought some chocolate (yum) and then our Harry Potter book (up to 2 of each book in assorted languages). Wandered a bit more then back to the hotel, where we had dinner in the hotel restaurant. Lily fell asleep part way through, so we stayed for dessert - it was a fantastic Belgian meal.
Sunday 22 March
Got up and sorted then checked out of the hotel. Bought breakfast from a supermarket, including a container of grapes - Lily loves grapes. Headed to the station via a section of Brugge we didn’t see yesterday, including some more pretty parks and canals.
We took the train back to Brussels, got a map from the station and headed out of the station straight into a huge trash and treasure style markets. Wandered through for a bit, but they seemed more trash than treasure, so we walked up the main boulevarde into the city centre - it was quite divy and somewhat neglected to start with but got nicer closer into the centre.
It was interesting that everything seemed to be in French here whereas Brugge was all Flemish and is less than an hour away. We grabbed some sandwiches from same chain as yesterday and sat in a square in front of the opera house to eat them. Can’t say it was especially pretty, but the same can be said for most of Brussels that we saw. Still a bit hungry and craving something warm, we got some fries in a cone (frittes) from a tiny shop with a long queue and then went to McDonalds to use their loo. We then explored the main Market square, which was the first really interesting part of the town, visually.
We walked up a hill via a craft Market to some formal gardens (unfortunately we had to go up lots of steps, which isn’t easy with a stroller, but we managed) made a little less formal by lots of graffiti. Got up to the palace then walked around to main park, which had a nice fountain. We ended up staying here for a while because Lily woke up, so we had a play near the fountain. We then walked a different route back to the main square, via the big cathedral which is up on a hill and looks very impressive.
We got our one and only waffle (with icecream and chocolate) of the trip and as we were eating it, realised we had picked the one place serving it with Australian icecream. 
We decided to begin walking back to station, even though our train wasn’t due to leave for hours, because we were hoping that instead of putting us on the later train, we could get on an earlier one, since ours had been cancelled due to trackwork. We went via the famous peeing statue and found he had clothes on as part of a Unicef campaign.
Got to station and discovered that the train we thought left at 7.30 actually left just before 7, but we were lucky enough to get seats and again go straight through the process and onto the train - the train we had originally been told we were moved to would have got to London after 11, so it was much better to be back to St. Pancras at 8:30.
