Since I thought I learned how to speak French after visiting Geneva and Chamonix last week, I was well-prepared to visit another French-speaking country this weekend: Belgium! I hadn’t planned on visiting Belgium while abroad, but I found a student flight deal from Copenhagen to Brussels a few weeks ago and pulled a group of five friends together for a weekend of food, beer and sightseeing.
Our flight landed in Brussels, the capital of Belgium, on Friday afternoon. We had some difficulties navigating through the confusing airport, but we finally caught a train from the airport to the center of the city and found our hostel at around 7. The hostel we stayed at is a popular one, so we weren’t able to all stay in the same room. I shared a room with my friend Ilana and two strangers: a Canadian girl a few years older than us who’s traveling around the world, and a teacher from New Mexico that’s doing a language school in Spain. They were both very friendly and I felt safe leaving my luggage there!
A sculpture we saw along our walk from the train station to our hostel.
Our first stop was food since we were all starving. The hostel gave us a map that we soon became obsessed with: it not only had major attractions, but also restaurant recommendations, locations of bars and clubs, shopping areas, and helpful tourist advice! We went to a hole-in-the-wall Belgian restaurant that the map mentioned was popular with locals. We were all excited to try authentic Belgian food, but there was one problem—the menu was all in French! Even my grasp of the language wasn’t quite enough to decipher some of the words, and none of my travel buddies could speak it either. Our very sweet waitress had another diner who could speak some English come over to our table to translate for us, and we all got some variation of a Belgian chicken dish that was delicious.
Yummy Belgium dinner! I got the chicken with the applesauce.
After dinner, we headed out to explore some of Brussels’ nightlife and get some of what Belgium is really known for: beer and waffles! We had waffles for dessert right next to the Manneken Pis, one of Brussels’ main attractions. It’s a bit of a mystery why it’s so famous since it’s just a tiny statue of a little boy peeing, but it does have a very cheap and very delicious waffle stand next to it!
Liz, Emily B., Emily C., Sam, Ilana and I in front of the Mannekin Pis- can you even see it?
FIRST BELGIAN WAFFLES!
Post-dessert we visited the Delirium Café, another famous Brussels institution. Delirium has over 2,004 types of beer—and there were probably close to that amount of people either inside the bar or in the outside area. We hung out there trying beers and left around 1 am. Before heading back to our hostel, we stopped to get our other food staple of the weekend- fries! Belgian fries are just as good as, if not better than, French fries. Now extremely full from dinner, waffles, beer and fries, we made it back to the hostel and went to bed so we could get an early start the next day.
The inside of Delirium- the ceiling shows the brands of all the beers they have!
Saturday began with a trip to a local flea market that opens at 5:30am every day. We were fine with getting there at 9:30. I bought a necklace for 5 euro that I think I probably could have paid less for if I had been able to negotiate in French, but 5 euro is still a great price. I took a nap on a church bench as I waited for my friends to finish browsing, then we headed to the train station for some day trips!
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Now I can finally say it… In Bruges!
After buying tickets from a very rude Belgian train employee and having a quick waffle breakfast, we got on the train and arrived in Bruges about an hour later. I saw zero scenery on our way there because I immediately fell asleep once I found a seat, but I immediately fell in love with Bruges as soon as we arrived. It didn’t hurt that it was a BEAUTIFUL sunny day.
Emily B. and I eating lunch outside in Bruges.
Emily B., our navigator for the trip, led us from the station into town, where we stopped for a lunch of fries. Our food choices became pretty predictable by the end of the trip. I watched the movie In Bruges last week so I could recognize some of the city sites, but all I really remembered was the tall tower that the characters climb. We saw some main squares, stunning medieval buildings and canals, but after a while we were sick of being in the main touristy area. We decided to find a café from 1515 that my friend Sam’s uncle had told her about. We had to ask for directions four different times, but we did finally make it to the café and had drinks in the beer garden. I would have loved to spend some more time walking the cobblestone streets of Bruges, but we decided we also wanted to see the city of Ghent since it’s halfway between Bruges and Brussels.
Sam, Ilana and I were most excited about Bruges because our European History teacher recommended it!
The 500 year old cafe in Bruges.
We arrived in Ghent around 6:30pm and found out the train station was pretty far from the city center- a 20 minute walk uphill. Instead of making the smart choice and taking a tram from the train station, we chose to walk. By the time we got to the main part of Ghent, we were so exhausted that we could barely appreciate the sites. We briefly admired the juxtaposition of old medieval castles with a McDonald’s in a mansion before collapsing at a restaurant table. The food was good, but I was so full from all of the fries, waffles and chocolate we’d already eaten that day that I could barely finish.
The canal we ate by in Ghent.
It was a struggle to stay awake on the train ride from Ghent back to Brussels at 10pm, so I knew there was no way I could go out that night. My friends felt the same way, so we went to bed early to catch up on sleep.
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Excited about another long day of exploring!
We woke up early again on Sunday to check out and leave our luggage in the hostel’s luggage room. Then it was time to see more of the city we’d actually been staying in for the past two days. We started by going to the top of a parking garage that’s known for having an incredible view. We took some pictures then left in search of food- waffles for breakfast again!
View of the Atomium from the top of Parking 58.
Buildings in the Grand-Place in Brussels.
The rest of our morning consisted of walking around and seeing sites like the Grand-Place, the gigantic Palace of Justice, and the church of Notre-Dame du Sablon. We had a falafel lunch, then took the metro to the Atomium and Mini-Europe! The Atomium is a huge model of an iron crystal that was built for the World’s Far in 1958. You can pay to go up to the top, but we didn’t because we were more excited about going to Mini-Europe. Mini-Europe is a park with miniature replicas of buildings from each of the countries in the European Union. I love minature things, especially micro pigs, so I was really excited about seeing Mini-Big Ben, Mini-Leaning Tower of Pisa, and even Mini-Nyhavn Harbor from Copenhagen!
Sam, Ilana, Emily C. and I in front of Mini-Nyhavn.
Trying to kick the Mini-Leaning Tower of Pisa back the other way?
By the time we finished at Mini-Europe, we only had about an hour before we needed to leave for the airport. We crashed on some grass at the Botanical Gardens for 45 minutes, then picked up our bags from the hostel and took the train back to the airport. Our flight got back to Copenhagen at 10pm and I immediately went to sleep, but I was really glad we were able to spend all of Sunday seeing Brussels since Bruges on Saturday might have been my favorite part of the trip. I’m still trying to detox my body from all the French fries, waffles and chocolate, but I think we spent the perfect amount of time in Belgium.