Month: February 2019

Brussels, Belgium

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This is a continuation of our first holiday to Belgium while living in the UK. This is all about Brussels!

It’s the last one in the Belgium series.

Before traveling to Ghent on Sunday (2 September), we had registered for a “make your own chocolate workshop” in Brussels. The meet up spot was in Town Hall, and it was crowded, as expected. Many of the buildings had trimmings of gold, and the sun hitting the building made it a lovely view. Our tour guide finally came for us and we began the class.

If you go to Brussels, this is definitely something I would recommend. It takes a few hours, but you get to learn how chocolate is made and actually make your own. It was so much fun, and we ate so much chocolate that we kind of got turned off of chocolate for the remainder of the trip! As you can see from the picture, we really had a blast. We made truffles, or chocolates that have a hard shell but a softer inside. We did have one scary moment when the wall started to fall apart, but I swear we had nothing to do with that haha.

We went back to Brussels on Monday (3 September), but by train this time! We traveled the city and tried to hit as many touristy spots as possible. We saw all three of the peeing statues: The Manneken Pis statue (the little boy), Jeanneke-Pis (the little girl), and the Zinneke Pis (the dog). I think I can speak for everyone when I say I was disappointed with the famous little boy. All the statues in the store and references made it seem like it was such a large statue! It was all of 1.5 feet tall, and it was dressed up in clothes for the weekend. What a drag.

We also took another class, the “Waffle Workshop”! Everyone knows that Belgium is known for waffles and chocolate, and we had a ton. We (Gian, Davoo, and I) ate like 6 waffles each. I even got the recipe for them, so I hope you guys enjoy it!

The last day we had some extra time, so we went to the Atomium which I wasn’t too impressed by. I will admit that we didn’t go inside, but it just didn’t seem too appealing. We took some photos outside of it and then walked a nearby trail. We got some cool pictures on the trail including me doing a handstand on some very wet grass on a timed camera.

Ghent, Belgium

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This is a continuation of our first holiday to Belgium while living in the UK. This is all about Ghent!

Don’t worry, it’s only one more Belgium post (Brussels is up next!)

The plan for Sunday (2 September) was to drive into Brussels and enjoy a “make your own chocolate workshop,” then train to Ghent to check out the city. We were lucky because it turns out parking is free on Sundays, so that saved us from paying for parking! We took the train from Belgium to Ghent, which was a little over an hour, but it was a smooth fun ride. If you’re interested in the chocolate workshop, you’ll have to see my next post (Brussels baby!).

We walked many miles to visit the City Center. I have never seen a town that had as many bikes as Ghent – it seemed like everyone had two bikes and just left them on the street for anyone to take. We went to Saint Nicholas Church, some other nearby buildings, and we also tried to go into this castle, but it closed early and we missed the entering time. It worked out because none of us were too thrilled about paying because it wasn’t the largest of castles.

One of my favorite parts of Ghent was Graffiti Street. Many urban towns have them and they are also so fascinating to see. It’s just something about local (and not local) artist tagging an alley with their own flare that’s amazing.

On the way back to the train station, we walked by some really creepy caves. We had an awesome photoshoot with Davoo looking like some kind of cave dweller, and Meggie and Gian resting under some vined columns.

  • Street Art
  • Belgium Church
  • Belgium Church
  • Creepy Davoo
  • Gian and Meggie

Bruges, Belgium

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This is a continuation of our first holiday to Belgium while living in the UK (Check out the first blog post here). This one is all about Bruges!

On Saturday (1 September), we went to Bruges and what a beautiful city it was! It was nice and sunny out, so we really took advantage of walking around the town. We found parking, which was actually pretty cool because you could add money to your meter from any other meter in the city. You just had to enter your license plate number and boom – Paid! We first strolled through the Historic Centre of Bruges seeing different architectural buildings such as the Belfort, the Markt, and a church which I can’t remember the name of (but I have pictures!). We hopped on a cheap little touristy boat and cruised through the city while the guide informed us about the town in three languages: English, French, and I want to say the third was Dutch, but I’m not too sure. We saw some of the different structures in the town, but my favorite thing on the boat tour was the huge whale made of recycling material.

  • Gian enjoying the boat cruise
  • Belgium beer taster
  • Buildings on the tour
  • church i don’t remember the name of
  • Inside the church
  • church
  • structure in belgium
  • recycled whale

We were quite hungry during this journey, but the food was so expensive! We ended up at Café Cambrinus (at least that’s what google tells me) where we got a meat sampler and tried out some Belgium Beer. I’d say 6/8 beers we had were amazing, which is pretty good because I don’t like many beers (Yes, you’ll see my drink beers quite often, but that doesn’t mean it’s my preferred drink!). After eating a little grub, we began our hunt for the best chocolate in town. We were super touristy and just followed google and trip advisor, so we ended up in this shop called “The Chocolate Line” which was good, but obviously expensive. We stopped by another shop around the corner which was smaller and cheaper, and honestly, I think their chocolate tasted much better. Unfortunately, I don’t have the name of the shop we went to. Either way, I loved the chocolate in Belgium…until we had too much chocolate which I’ll also cover later. We probably would have benefited from asking a local where we should get some really good chocolate. Lessons learned.

Davoo was interested in seeing the “Windmills of Bruges,” so we headed that way. We walked for quite some time, but as I mentioned earlier, the weather was beautiful, so it was a journey well spent. We traveled along a little stream (or river?) and took some cool pictures while there. We got to the windmills and had such a great time there. There was a family of five seeing the windmills as well who offered to take our picture. The parents were super laidback with their kids and let them run around and have the time of their lives. They jumped off the windmill and the parents strongly suggested “keeping their knees together” when they landed so they wouldn’t hurt themselves. The son decided he’d roll down the steep hill to have some fun and then busted his head on the street. He was so confused he practically had birds flying around his head, but he obviously knew he was being dumb because he didn’t complain or say anything. He just put his hand on his head and stopped playing. It was funny, but I know his head hurt the next day!

  • Selfie at the windmills
  • Shaun sitting on the windmill
  • Chocolate Horse
  • butts and windmills
  • group windmill photo
  • More Chocolate!

It took us forever to walk back and by the time we got to the car we were starving. The restaurants weren’t really open because it was Sunday, and the places that were open were too expensive, so we decided to grab food on the way home. We went to this Asian buffet which was an experience itself. We were so thirsty the whole time we were out that we kept ordering waters. When the bill came, we quickly learned that in Europe, you are charged for water, even if it’s tap water. We all had like six glasses and they were like $2 each! Learned that lesson fast.

#Lessonslearned – Water in Europe is not free.

Belgium – Our First “Real” Holiday

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The first “real” trip/holiday/vacation we took while living in England was to Belgium over U.S Labor Day weekend (31 Aug – 4 Sept). I say “real” because I’m not counting our trip in July to Gian’s hometown, Caguas, Puerto Rico, for our niece’s quinceañera. I’ll blog about that beautiful experience another day. Anyways, Belgium was an amazing first stop for our adventures!

The trip was originally supposed to be early August, but as we waited for people to commit, the plane tickets crept up and I felt it wasn’t worth going for 60 bucks more per person than originally planned for. We rescheduled the trip, got everyone on board, and finally booked it.  The entire group couldn’t go because of other arrangements, but that happens when you travel in numbers.

With it being our first real trip and all, we were excited, nervous, and didn’t really know what to expect.   We booked a RyanAir night flight 2155-2220 to the CRL Airport in Brussels and rented a car. Good thing because it was a 45 minute drive from the airport to our Airbnb! When we finally arrived, we could not find the apartment for the life of us. Turns out the keys were cleverly hidden in a bush, under a rock…but hey, I’m not judging. It was a nice Airbnb in Watermael-Boitsfort, Brussels, which is about a 15 minute drive to town.

When you book a car online for European countries, make sure you check how many miles/kilometers you are given. If you go over, of course you get a big fat charge at the end. Luckily we knew exactly how many miles we had, so we had to take this into consideration for the trip. While we were in Belgium, we went to three cities: Brussels, Bruges, and Ghent. We decided that we would drive to Bruges and Brussels, and take the train to Ghent to effectively use our mileage.

I broke down the trip into separate blog posts because it was about four pages on Microsoft Word, and no one wants to read four pages of text in a blog. Stay tuned for future posts about the cities of Belgium!

#Lessonslearned – A big thing I took away from this vacation is know your companions’ travel styles. I would highly suggest talking about it when you’re planning your trip, even before booking the flight, because in all honesty, that can make or break your trip. You may want to see everything while someone else may want to sit and relax. Both are fine, but just know what you’re getting into. Luckily for us, our typical travel group is about the same. We’re not cheap, maybe just frugal, but we do want to see the city and what’s in it. It’s all about the balance.