We are on an overdose of chocs over the weekend coz we went
Belgium!! haha yea after 3 weekends in London, we went for another weekend trip out of town. To Bruges (pronounced "broosh") and stopover Brussels for a few hours. Hmm yes before we came, I didn't even know Bruges existed and well, I think it's one of those relatively unknown places people know.. but we went after a various people we met here strongly recommended to us to go. It is a quaint little town (1h train from Brussels) known for their lace and chocolatesssss!!
above: typical lace shops in Bruges
It's said that a Belgian consumes an average of 7.6kg of chocolates in one year. Not hard to see why...
inside a chocolate shop in Bruges
Well we took Eurostar for the first time to Brussels, around 2h train ride and woohoo we have reached Belgium. super nice compared to taking the plane.. (we now have a bit phobia rushing and squeezing with people for the budget airline Ryanair). Few hours to spare so we went to the grand market place.. it's grand indeed, with the gothic architecture.. cathedral and ancient buildings. That was nice, and already, we saw streets lined with pretty cookies, chocs & waffles shops.. omg hard to choose which shop to go into!
Brussels
 |
| Our first choc waffle in Belgium |
 |
| in the grand market square with many ancient gothic architecture buildings |
Bruges
Bruges is a pretty pretty medieval town with horse chariots going up and down the cobbled streets (mainly to cater to tourists). It was raining heavily when we reached but oh well, we were too excited to let it dampen our mood. We checked into our hotel and started our walk to the town centre. omg omg.. almost every other shop was a chocolate shop, every street has one or two waffle shop and tea rooms. We took so long to get to the town centre. haha
Chocolate shopping is something new to us. You go in a choc shop, choose the size of the box you want, and then tada! Pick what u want from the huge array of chocs presented in front of you. It is real tough, I tell ya. You look at those pretty delectable brown things lined neatly in front of you and read the descriptions.. it's an ardous task. Finally we emeraged from our first choc store. *beaming*
The city hall is a very nice building (my fav in fact! somehow I love the colors) and there was this old man playing the harp. With the soothing music and the breeze (rain has stopped, praise God), we sat on the steps and enjoyed our chocs.. mmm... c'est la vie!!
 |
| The City Hall |
 |
| The amazing harpist |
 |
| Market Square/ Town Hall |
 |
| Trying some Belgian fruit beer |
Finally we reached the market square with the iconic Bruges buildings and there are restaurants everywhere selling similar food- their local speciality- Mussels! We were told we have to try mussels and beer here.. and so we did! Happened there was a music event going on that night so the atmosphere was very nice. Al fresco dining and we could enjoy the music as well (Flemish songs to be precise haha.. but they sang some english songs too lah).
 |
| Dinner menu (gasp selling rabbit meat!) |
 |
| Mussels for dinner, their local speciality |
 |
| Medieval buildings with river at night |
The next day we got lured into another lovely looking tea room just opp our hotel and my god.. irresistable! So we had our breakfast there. The cakes were oh-so-heavenly and Cynthia's homemade choc drink was simply... sinful. They give u a cup of hot milk and a separate big cube of dark choc on a stick so you dip this cube in and stir. It is
impossible not to put on weight here.
 |
| Delectable cakes |
 |
| Us int he tea room, seated in the courtyard |
 |
| THE Chocolate drink |
We walked around some more before heading back to the train station & took the train back to Brussels. Went to Mini Europe which is part of a bigger theme park called Bruparck. Brussels is one of the three capitals of the European Union and as the name suggests, Mini Europe has many iconic buildings of various cities part of the EU and built on a scale of 1:25 so it's really interesting.
 |
| Atomium in Brussels |
 |
| Leaning Tower of Pisa in Mini Europe |
preview of Paris, soon-to-come in Aug! *can't wait for my dear girls to arrive!*
above: that's the city hall in Stockholm, it's interesting to see that we were there last month; and of course, we had to take one with the Houses of Parliament * Big Ben in London
Wala! That wraps up our weekend.. and... no doubt we have to detox over the next few weeks!!
p.s. jiemei, how come you say Belgium boring? no leh, in fact I like it! Like the other people whom I mentioned earlier, I'd strongly recommend Bruges to people too :)
Comments