Day 4 ~ A New Journey

Brussels did it again. We were going to grab a quick breakfast and hit the train station, but we started down one street and then another and then another, and before we knew it, we’d been exploring Brussels for hours.

We started off by detouring to a cathedral only a few steps away from our hotel. This was the St. Michael and St. Gudula (you’ve heard of him, right?) Cathedral. Sadly, the pics turned out to be an unusable file type. Trust us, it was cool.

We strolled along the cobblestone streets again, and this time got pulled into a galerie that went on for blocks. We’d seen one of these galeries at Leadenhall Market in London, which had been a favorite of Stef’s. We were hotly anticipating seeing some of these covered shopping streets in Paris. We were so pleased to see this gorgeous one in Brussels. We’d been so overwhelmed the previous day we’d barely noticed it, but Brussels gave us a second chance.

We decided to head to the St. Catherine neighborhood for lunch, and made our way northwest. We wandered by a church that we found very pleasing – symmetrical and precise like St. Croce in Florence, not towering and gothic like the confections we’d seen around. We kept wandering around looking for St. Catherine – then realized that was St. Catherine.

Again, our photos of the exterior are turning out to be a file type not supported by WordPress. Sorry. Trust us, it’s lovely.

We had a quick lunch of falafel, cauliflower, and a fried haloumi sandwich that featured the most savory red peppers. The falafel was unlike what we’d had before – no spices really, but lots of sesame seeds on the outside. In the St. Catherine neighborhood, the streets were wide, with a long median. This is clearly where the hipsters hang out; there were record stores, vintage shops and little art galleries everywhere. Again, no usable pictures. 🙁

We popped next door for a little dose of caffeine. We’d have been happy with anything, but this was an elegant little spot with a whole experience for us! We got to pick our coffee beans, and we got a little bite of liege waffle, which was wonderful with the espresso, and ice cold water to clear our palates. Look at the crema on Daniel’s!

We couldn’t leave Brussels without swinging by the Grand Place one more time. Then we collected our luggage and were on our way to Bruges.

This was our first time using the trains with our Eurail pass, and it mostly went well. We were very disappointed to find that information was hard to come by. Bizarrely, conductors made lots of announcements, but never announced what stop was being made. Hopefully we’ll learn how to navigate European rail before we get on a train going the wrong direction.

The Belgian countryside was really lovely, green fields of corn and pastures with happy-looking cows and horses. We saw ancient brick houses with solar arrays mounted on the roofs. About 20% of houses had solar – amazing!

Bruges was a much bigger train station than we’d anticipated, and the walk from the station to the hotel with our luggage was also bigger than we anticipated. We’d known about Bruges’ famous Markt Square and well-preserved 14th-century streets, but were surprised to see lots of toney new bars and restaurants lining the long Koning Albert Park, then miles of elegant boutiques winding along the cobblestone streets. We were pretty goal-oriented with the luggage and all, but hope to post photos tomorrow.

We eventually reached our hotel, and it’s tucked into a quiet street with many other accommodating-looking hotels. It had been hard to tell from the website what to expect from the room, but we were anticipating something vaguely like our cramped Brussels room. What we got was a lavishly spacious character room with ceiling beams, 6-inch wide hardwood floors, a bathroom the size of our kitchen back home, a decorative fire place, multiple places to sit, and 12-foot high windows. We were thrilled, and so pleased we had planned to spend several days in such accommodating accommodations.

Update! We have pictures of our wonderful hotel room:

The picture doesn’t capture the absurd amount of space in this room. Stef comfortably did all the yoga she desired in the wide open spaces.

Again, we intended to step out, maybe pop into the Markt Square, swing by the grocery store for a modest dinner in the hotel courtyard, and call it a night. But when we got to the square, it was impossible to imagine leaving. The light came and went with the passing clouds, but when it was good, it was great.

We chose a squareside cafe for a dinner of chicken stew and beef stew (with frites, of course), and it was one of our best meals so far. The chicken stew had a lovely little bread concoction with buttery layers, like a croissant and a biscuit had a baby and they all lived in a chicken pot pie.

Then Stef dragged Daniel to a gelato spot for two scoops: Ferrero Roche and speculoos, and they were…spectaculoos.

We are so excited to explore Bruges tomorrow – and will hopefully get our cameras taking WordPress-compatible photos so we can share this ridiculousness with you.