I think the Thanksgiving episode of Bob’s Burgers summed it up best:

Belgium was a pretty big relief from France. The weather was cooler, the people were friendlier, and the general attitude was less frenzied.

I talked in my last post about how I’d been looking forward to Switzerland, and how I was heartbroken when we had to change our plans at the last minute. Kathleen reassured me that Belgium was a good alternative; she’d loved it when she visited before, and she ended up being right. Belgium was truly a highlight of the trip.

I’m picking up on 04 July 2015, and to recap the day, we had:

• gotten up before dawn and walked over a mile with our heavy backpacks to the train station in Colmar
• rode the train for almost two hours to Paris
• stowed our backpacks at Gare du Nord and then braved the metro to explore Paris
• walked nearly 15,000 steps, mostly along the Seine, to hit as many Parisian landmarks as humanly possible in a six-hour period
• retrieved our backpacks and sat on the floor of the crowded Gare du Nord as we waited for our train
• rode two hours to Brussels and then changed trains to Antwerp

As soon as we de-trained (de-boarded? disembarked?) my jaw hit the marble floor.

This is a train station. Isn’t it gorgeous? I could’ve spent all day in there, but our hotel was still another mile away, and we were laden with backpacks. Besides, we would get to enjoy this view a few more times over the next three days.

Our hotel was kind of a catch-22. In hindsight, it was one of the better places we stayed as far as location, space, and some amenities, but it had its drawbacks. There was no front desk clerk. There was only one washer/dryer for the entirety of the nine-floored hotel (but we were lucky to even have access to one). We witnessed a nasty payment dispute between a customer and one of the owners in the lobby. And wifi cost €3 every 24 hours, and the signal was terrible.

On the flipside, we didn’t totally need the wifi, I just have certain creature comforts. There was an extra bed, and they were more comfortable than the Travelodges in England. The hotel room was large and there was basic cable. There were cooking utensils. The view was pretty great. And it was breezy. After four days in France, we nearly cried when we threw open the large windows and felt the cool breeze on our faces.

After we dropped our bags and talked at length about how tired we were, we headed back out into Antwerp and walked to the nearest supermarket, the Delhaize that was only two blocks away. I made a few jokes along the lines of “it’s nice to go shopping at Food Lion” but it turns out Food Lion is a subsidiary of Delhaize, so the joke was on me.

We picked up stuff for dinner and some beers, you know, the essentials, and I cooked up a pasta dish with cherry tomatoes, spinach, cheese, and pancetta that went over very well.

Look at those happy faces! Those are the faces of two people who felt more settled after our time in France. I can’t emphasize enough how much we felt more relaxed in Belgium.

They’d also bought the same beer I’d pointed out in France, and they approved of one of Justin’s favorites.

We fell asleep to the sound of a street festival that night. Any other night, it might’ve been disruptive, but we were all so exhausted from our long day that I don’t even remember my head hitting the pillow.

Our Belgium itinerary had always been loosely planned. The only concrete thing was the plan to go to Bruges on Sunday, because train tickets in Belgium are half-price on weekends. Kathleen had suggested going to our furthest destination on Sunday to take advantage of that, so to Bruges we went the next morning.

I. Loved. Bruges.

Don’t let this fool you; Bruges was pretty busy with tourists. We just lucked out with this quiet street.

This is a very popular and highly-rated restaurant in one of the most historic intersections in Bruges.

The canal is as gorgeous as I’d hoped it would be! You can see some of the canal tours happening.

Just past this picturesque area is the shopping center. Spoiler alert: it’s full of Belgian chocolate shops.

You can see the Belfry in the background there, which is the centerpiece of the main square.

The square in Bruges is called the Markt, and vehicles are largely prohibited (buses and some local cars were allowed through) so that the area is pedestrian-friendly.

The Belfry is surrounded by the old trading market.

Standing further back, and you can see how many bicycles are parked around the Markt.

This is the view of the Markt from beside the Belfry, and most of those buildings are expensive restaurants. We had fun reading all of the menus and seeing the different cuisines that were available, but Kathleen had been talking endlessly about a Bicky burger and the amazing Belgian frites, so we were set on our lunch menu.

This is the Stadhuis, or the City Hall, and there was an exhibition in the main atrium that we wandered around.

The exterior was far more fascinating to me. There were 10 or 12 rows of these somber, judgemental-looking men staring down at us.

We chose Friterie 1900* in the Markt for lunch, which was relatively inexpensive compared to its neighbors. We were starving and ordered three Bicky burgers with the special sauce, along with two orders of frites (because again, I don’t like potatoes. And we hadn’t even been to Ireland yet).

This was my biggest food-related womp-womp moment of the whole trip. In fact, I was pretty good about ordering food I was pretty sure I would like, the only other exception being the Yorkshire pudding in England. One bite of this burger and my stomach turned.

Kathleen had never specified that Bicky burgers are not made of ground beef. It’s actually made of a mix of pork, poultry, and horse meat, and then the patty is deep-fried. I had assumed that I had been put off by the pork, since it’s my least favorite meat (especially in fried form) but I didn’t know there was horse meat in it at the time. In fact, I’d bet $20 that Kathleen didn’t know it, either.

To make matters worse, I didn’t like the special sauce either. Without a side to graze on, I was out a meal for the first time on the whole trip, and I didn’t feel up to ordering something else.

I did enjoy taking a picture of Stella in the middle of Belgium with the Belfry in the background, though. It wasn’t my beer and I wasn’t eating the local cuisine, but I was there, dagnabbit!

*The restaurant has some pretty polarized reviews on the various travel/food websites. Kathleen and Mum enjoyed their meals, and it was so much cheaper than everything else around it, so we had a good experience. Your mileage may vary, especially if you’re a Bicky and/or frites aficionado.

It started raining as we they ate lunch, and we retreated upstairs to finish our their meal, but it became apparent that waiting out the rain wasn’t really an option. We ducked into a souvenir shop to get some ponchos (and an umbrella for Kathleen) and then headed back out into the glorious, cold rain.

Honestly, rain couldn’t dampen our spirits. We had been so miserable in France that we welcomed it.

Seriously. I loved Bruges so much.

We wandered around (there was a side adventure to find an ATM and then to get coins for the public bathrooms) and I managed to snap some random pictures.

We called this a Belgian Snickelway.

The rain hadn’t let up, but my stomach had recovered from lunch and I was hungry, so that meant one thing: liege waffles!

There were tons of places to choose from, and we chose at random. There was no question what I was going to order.

Speculoos! And it was delicious! I wish I could eat another one right now.

Om nom nom.

Happy faces!

But it was still raining, and at that point, I had to accept the unbearable truth: I wouldn’t get to do the one thing I’d dearly wanted to do. All of the canal tours were closed due to the weather. I was pretty upset.

We weren’t ready to call it quits on Bruges, though, so we debated what to do that would keep us indoors, and we landed pretty quickly on the Bruges Beer Museum.

It’s really cool! It’s very different from the brewery tour we’d done in Boston and the distillery tours we’d done in Scotland. You pay for entrance and for a virtual tour, where you are handed a tablet and headphones. You’re then instructed to wander at your leisure, scanning the QR codes in order to either listen to or read the information on the different aspects of Belgian beer.

There were sections on 1) the brewing process 2) the history of beer in Belgium 3) the different types of beer around the world and 4) the local Belgian beers and their various stories.

It was very educational and totally worth the money. And of course, there’s a tasting at the end.

You can pay to taste or pay just for the tour, and obviously, I paid just for the tour while the other two paid to taste. If you pay to taste, you’re given four tokens when you turn in your tablet to the bartender, and then you can choose from the menu that you can see in the picture above. As you can also see, beer tastings = full glasses. I know two people who were a leeeeeeettle tipsy when we left the tasting room when they were closing.

This was the view from the window of the tasting room. The bartender was very nice to us, he even gave us the extra four chips that another couple had chosen not to use, hence the tipsiness. It’s okay, they were cute, not sloppy, and I was stone cold sober.

We wandered around the chocolate shops on our way back to the train station, because chocolate, and we bought a sample pack from a local shop which we ate over the next few nights.

We missed our intended train and had to kill an hour at the station before the next one, so we ate some Dominoes pizza. I can’t remember the last time I even ate Dominoes in America, but it’s pretty good in Belgium.

The ride home was gorgeous. I forgot how late the sun would set there.

And that was also the night I snapped this picture in our elevator. Belgians cook very differently than we do, I think.

It was on the way back to the hotel that evening that we realized we’d made a very fortunate scheduling oversight: the Tour de France was coming through Antwerp the next day! Luckily our schedule had been pretty fluid (we’d had Bruges, Antwerp, Brussels, and possibly Ghent on our ideal itinerary with only Bruges tethered to a specific day) so we made the decision right then to tour Antwerp the next day.

They were already roping off the route the next morning when we got up to get breakfast. We settled on The Food Maker and ate upstairs so we could have a view.

People were already lining up for the parade so we staked out our place.

And then we lined up for free stuff.

I ended up with a pretty sweet Cornetto tote bag, and Kathleen got an assortment of candy. See the guy leaning into the picture from the right? Yeah, he was pretty greedy. He got like 8x the stuff we did and kept boxing us out. Dad would be pretty disappointed in our lapsed basketball skills.

After the parade we moved further up the main road to get a better view. Then the waiting began.

It was a mild but sunny day, and overall, we didn’t have to wait long. It seemed to take forever for it to start at the time, but it was worth it.

As quickly as they were there, they were gone. It was amazing. I have crazy happenstance memories of watching the Tour de France over the years — it was never something I actively sought to watch, but I ended up seeing anyway. I remember watching it in 2011 in my now-husband’s living room with his mother, who was recovering from her second round of chemo. Last summer, we were in Orlando to go to Harry Potter world, and we were staying with our friend’s aunt, who had the Tour de France on all weekend. It was just really cool to be there in person, almost on accident, just like all the times I accidentally saw it on television.

Once the biker gang had passed and the barricades were taken down, we proceeded to explore Antwerp.

The statue of David Teniers, the famed Flemish artist, was just behind the Tour de France sign in the earlier pictures.

I spent such a long time trying to find out more information about these buildings. All I could glean was that Elektra is on the top of the left building, holding a lightning bolt aloft. They appeared to be built to complement each other — the designs are so similar but with very clear differences — but I spent most of my wifi that night trying to find more info and only came up with the fact that they’re both shopping centers.

A better shot of the building on the left, with Elektra on top. Isn’t it gorgeous?

Just beyond those buildings is this ornate mall, called Stadsfeestzaal.

Kathleen and I are on the staircase! Hi!

Another breathtaking ceiling design.

And the closer we got to the river, the more crowded the streets got. There were so many restaurants, shops, and historical landmarks that we definitely missed a few gems.

But no way could we miss this, the town hall in the Grote Markt. Usually those flags are of all the other European countries, but they’d replaced them with the yellow Tour de France flags for the special occasion.

And sporting a yellow Tour de France jersey was this statue of Silvius Brabo, who sliced off the hand of the river giant and tossed it back into the water. That’s right — this is a statue of a man throwing a hand. It’s not even the quirkiest statue or story we would encounter in Belgium. They change his jersey to fit different festivals, seasons, and events happening in Antwerp.

We walked to the river and toured some castle ruins, then doubled back so that Mum and Kathleen could tour this church:

They got cornered by a verbose employee. I waited outside, expecting it to take only 20 minutes, and watched a few guys put on a show where they did tricks on bicycles. I got pretty sunburned and was not a happy camper when they emerged from the church nearly two hours later. The previous times we’d split up, we’d always agreed on a meeting time and place, but this time I was stuck there waiting for them instead of being able to explore a little bit on my own. This is also how I ended up sunburned later:

I sported that sunburn until day 4 in Ireland. But anyway, we ate a very late lunch at a small cafe and then just wandered aimlessly, taking in the sights.

I honestly don’t remember what we did for dinner that night — I think we cooked again? But I don’t remember what.

Our last day was spent in Brussels, which Kathleen warned us about. Brussels, unlike Antwerp and Bruges, speaks French instead of Dutch. Even the trains change languages when you get into Brussels. We were all still “recovering” from our experience in France so we were wary of Brussels as we took the train in early that morning.

We shouldn’t have been wary. Not even a little bit.

So you know how the main square in Antwerp was called “Grote Markt”? Well the main square in Brussels is called “Grand Place.” They both mean the same thing, but one is Dutch and the other is French. It’s kinda crazy and cool how the language just completely switched — no longer were we in Brussels, no, we were in Bruxelles!

Anyway, this is the Grand Place, and the beautiful building pictured in the two photos above is creatively named Maison Grand-Place. It appears to be privately owned and rented out for big events. I don’t even want to know how much a wedding would cost there.

If that’s not enough Maison for you, then have a look at the Maison du Roi.

The French name translates to “king’s house,” but it’s still colloquially known as “Broodhuis,” or “bread hall,” since it used to be a market. Now it houses the Brussels City Museum.

The whole square is surrounded by guildhouses with various historical context. I could’ve studied these facades for hours, they’re so gorgeous and ornate.

This is the Hotel de Ville, or the Stadhuis van Brussel, or, you know… City Hall. There’s a pretty popular bike tour company that runs out of there, and that’s where Mum collected more brochures and maps.

Some of the square was being reconstructed but the rest of it was so gorgeous that we didn’t miss what we couldn’t see.

It was already lunch time by the time we were done in the square, so we wandered a bit and settled on a promising looking restaurant along the Rue du Midi.

I can’t remember what made us choose this, but I’m pretty sure it was their free wifi with password, which was written on a chalkboard inside.

It also had a promising menu. My companions ordered beers:

She got a LOT of looks from passersby with that contraption, but it’s the correct way to serve Kwak, and she looks happy, doesn’t she?

On the other hand, I needed one thing to make me happy:

I sipped it and was like “Wow okay THIS is good!” and hadn’t realized just how much I’d missed the “real” stuff since England (where I’d been ordering espressos, not drip coffee) and was so tired of the little packs of instant coffee I’d been subsisting on. Yeah, I have a problem.

It made me brave, or maybe I was desperate, I don’t know, because you guys — I ordered a burger.

And it was phenomenal.

Mum was like “Let me get a picture!” and I was like “UM NO” and we all had a big laugh over me kind of burying my face in the first delicious burger since BEFORE we had left America, because my brother had concocted this gross stuffed burger idea when we were all in Colorado and thanks to some mechanical malfunctions, half the burgers had been charred, so basically I NEEDED THIS.

I’m pretty sure Kathleen and Mum both got meatball dishes and liked them very much, but not as much as I liked my burger, y’all.

When lunch was over and paid, we wandered into a couple of stores and debated the best way to cover ground in Brussels. We were aware that we were only on the tip of the iceberg, and we were at a bit of a loss. That was when we lucked right into a free, English-spoken walking tour of Brussels that had just begun.

I can’t tell you how beneficial this tour was for us. We stuck with it for the next couple of hours, absorbing everything the tour guide said and learning so much more about Brussels than we did about Antwerp or Bruges.

I think we first saw the group on the edge of the Grand Place once we’d gone back in there, and the guide’s voice carried enough that we started following him. His very next stop was the most iconic statue in Brussels, and maybe in all of Belgium.

A little boy peeing. He’s literally named “Mannekin-Pis,” and my favorite thing about Belgium besides the food, architecture, culture, and people, has to be the literal names they assign to everything. It’s like if Ron Swanson had named every landmark in Pawnee.

There’s a cult of mystique around him, because he’s so quirky and because no one seems to know how he originated. He’s even been stolen before! Many of the surrounding stores are Mannekin-themed, and the souvenir stores, well…

I really wish I could’ve bought one of these, but we were flying the very next morning with only carryon luggage, so it wasn’t meant to be.

Another favorite place was Delirium Village, because it was totally unexpected that we’d see the bar where one of Justin’s favorite beers originated.

It’s a pretty popular party spot as well, it fills up with people on the weekends and they are rowdy all hours of the night.

The cafe also holds a Guinness World Record! How funny, we were flying to Ireland the next morning!

This was another place I’d seen before our trip and had hoped to see in person, and we were lucky that our tour guide took us there. It’s Les Galleries Royale Saint-Hubert, which was built for the high society in Brussels to shop without having to deal with the weather. It’s still filled with luxury stores.

From here, we walked to the St. Michael and St. Gudula Cathedral, where there were no good photo ops, then we continued to Brussels Park. The tour guide stopped here to give us a break from walking and talk about Belgium’s darker side, namely the history of their atrocities in the Belgian Congo. It’s grim and horrifying, but an undeniable part of Belgium’s history, and it was good that this tour guide, at least, didn’t gloss over it.

With that story fresh in our minds, we proceeded to the Royal Palace.

And then we walked to the Royal Square.

The Restaurant du Mim; I’ll be honest, I only took a picture of it because it looks so cool!

We ended our tour on the steps at the top of the Mont des Artes Garden, where we tipped our tour guide handsomely and thanked him for the wonderful tour.

And then I had one thing I wanted to do before I left Belgium: eat one last liege waffle.

Mission accomplished! This time I got one with chocolate syrup, in case you can’t tell. It was delicious.

We did some souvenir shopping and more sightseeing, then decided to get some dinner along one of the alleys that our tour guide had suggested. After a bit of debate, we settled on this place.

Kathleen was insistent that we had to eat mussels in Brussels, and not just because of the wordplay; she really loved eating mussels when she was there before. You’re probably thinking “Yeah but you don’t eat potatoes and you were put off of one bite of a Bicky burger. No way you’re eating mussels.”

Well, fun fact: I love raw oysters. I can easily finish two dozen on my own. No one was more shocked than my husband the first time I ate, and loved, a raw oyster. I have two rules, though: I only eat raw oysters when I’m by the sea and when they’re in season. So where I live now, about 30 mins from the Gulf coast, is too far for me.

I’d never had mussels before, but I was reasonably sure I would like them.

Hooray! It was a good food day for me! They were delicious and I was full before I even got to the bottom.

With dinner over and an early flight the next morning, we sadly started our walk back to the train station. I managed to snap a couple more pictures.

The Royal Theater.

And Bruxelles Central, which has both translations on the bulding, hehe.

I was sad to leave Belgium but it was nice to have a good, cool morning to walk our heavy backpacks back to the Antwerp train station the next morning. We went right back to Brussels because our flight was departing from Brussels Zavantem airport.

We had no idea what we were in for.

We had hoped our nearly two-hour wait to check in would be the worst part. Our expressions pretty much cover the spectrum: Mum is four-five seconds from wildin’, Kathleen is beseeching, and I’m sarcastically looking at my selfie like “Everything is greeeeeeat!”

But it got worse.

The line for passport control was as far s the eye could see. Seriously. Look at that picture. You can’t even see the end of the line. It was horrible. And security also had long lines, so we ended up running through the airport with our heavy backpacks and got yelled at by security guards. I don’t even like running recreationally, no way was I gonna do it in a crowded airport with 40lbs strapped to my back just for the fun of it!

But we made our flight and by 10:30am, we were headed for Ireland, the other land of our people.