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| About to ride the Eurostar train from St. Pancras station in London |
This was our first trip to "The Continent" since moving to the UK...hopefully the first of many. We didn't start keeping this blog until January 2008 so the journal entry for this trip is kicking it old school in Erin's handwriting in a leather book.
In short, we went for beers and chocolate, and to try out the Eurostar train which as of this month, moved from Waterloo to St. Pancras Train Station. Not a bad way to travel.
Pics from the trip-->
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=hj0zhyv.967kuprj&x=0&y=-n8duvi&localeid=en_US
The following was copied from Erin's journal in February 2011.
Saturday
We arrived this morning at about 10am via the Eurostar from London St. Pancras Station. The trip took about two hours with an hour lost due to the time difference. We walked through a somewhat sketchy part of town from the train station to the Grand Place which is the center of town. After wandering through the tiny streets lined with chocolate shops and sandwich places, we landed at a small corner bar/café on the corner of Rue des Brasseurs called au Brasseur. Eric had a croque-monsieur (ham and mystery cheese) and I had onion soup (very mediocre). They apparently have not banned smoking here so I refused to sit inside. However, the weather is clear but extremely frigid, but it was better than smelling like smoke. Oh, and we packed extremely light – 1 outfit, toothbrush, change of undies and an undershirt. We will only be here for the weekend and wanted to deal with little baggage.
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| Grand Place |
Following lunch, we went back to Grand Place (the main square in the center of town). We were so cold from being outside for the past two hours that we decided to go into the Museum of Brussels. For 3 euros each, we were able to stroll through rooms filled with artifacts, models, and history of the city. It was educational and warm!
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| The female Pis-er |
One of the funniest parts of Brussels history is the legend of the Mannekan Pis. This is what it sounds like - the pissing mannequin - there are many stories about the little boy who constantly pees. But there are many replica statues and outfits for the little boy who statnds about 3 feet tall and is always peeing. After our museum trip, we headed back outside for some nice hot Belgian chocolate. We had followed some directions on places to see and visit from one of Eric’s colleagues who lives in Brussels – Julie Maquest. We had a hard time finding the specific area of chocolate places she recommended so we divided to head southeast to one a bit more off the areas surrounding Grand Place and Brussels.
I ventured into the Museum District and up an incline to an area that overlooked the central part of town. It was quite a view. Outside the Royal Library we were enticed by the smells of hot Belgian waffles coming from a van parked out 100 feet away. We had seen these vans all over town - kind of like the hot dog carts in NY. It was our of respect for the Belgian culture that we try this local delicacy. Mmm – hot, flaky, with a dusting of white sugar. To wash the waffle down, we went across the road to a café and had some uninspiring hot chocolate and a white circus peanut in the shape of the Virgin Mary – very strange. It was getting a bit late so we decided to try to find the bar we had scoped out to watch the Michigan/Ohio State game. After heading in the wrong direction for a few minutes (20) we pulled out our map and turned around. It turns out the bar was the other direction on the Rue de T’oison D’Or. At last, we found it. It had since been renamed “Big Al’s” and was clearly closed and under construction. Bummer. It was time to find our hotel – the Four Seasons (I mean Four Points – Sheraton) and find another venue asap. After approximately 1 ½ miles we found our hotel in a bit more of a residential area. We checked in. I took a short nap – my dogs were barking. At this point we had been walking around, taking in the views for about 5 hours. Eric went to look for a new bar at the business center. 20 minutes later, he returned with a placed called Fat Boys in the east on Luxembourg Place. After eating some sandwiches we had packed, we headed out to Le Sablon for some more sight seeing. We had about 1 ½ hours before the game. Le Sablon was quite cute. Small narrow streets with modern shops and restaurants. The main square had quite a few chocolate shops and cafes. We happened upon a restaurant that seemed to have authentic Belgian good called Tavern la Rossa. We decided to come back following the game (it was across the street from Q-Zar, the laser-tag place) – kind of strange. We then walked to Fat Boys.
At Fat Boys, which seemed to be the one sports bar in all of Brussels, we were relieved to see it was still very much in business! The game was just about to start and it happened to be on one smaller tube television, above the bar right as we walked in. The Italy/Scotland soccer game occupied the five other TVs in the bar. Those soccer fans are rowdy and very passionate! We ended up meeting another Michigan fan who lived in Brussels and had gone to UM. Nice guy – liked to clap a lot. Too bad we lost to Ohio State for the fourth year in a row. Oh, we also met the owner of the bar, Fat Boy, who was from Pennsylvania originally, had retired and moved to Brussels 11 years prior. He then opened Fat Boys seven years ago. It seemed to do very well as a sports bar that plays all of the soccer games and American sporting events.
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| Erin's new favorite - raw ground beef. |
We took a taxi after the game to dinner. The place was smaller and had a bit of an upscale feel. The menu was in French so Eric had to translate as best he could. I ordered a portion of fromage (cheese) for an appetizer and filet americaine, frites for my main course. Eric had a traditional Belgian dish called Waterzooi. The cheese was a plate of white cheese cubes (not sure the kind) and mini gherkins and pickled pearl onions. It was a lot of cheese. A few minutes later our meals arrived. Eric’s was a bowl of chicken in a yellowish cream sauce. Mine was a molded mass of raw ground beef with parsley sprinkled on top. After five minutes of hysterical laughter, we asked the waitress if this was correct and she said what I had ordered and brought out the frites. Eric felt bad about me not eating any of it so he tried it. He also put some in his bowl of yellow cream sauce to disguise the taste and the temperature (it was cold). I felt bad too so I tried a speck. It was disgusting. I put about a 3rd of it in my napkin and threw it out in the bathroom. We left about a half hour later and went back to the hotel. We were looking for something sweet and to kill the impending E.coli so we ended up going to the hotel bar for hot chocolate. Apparently this Four Points Sheraton hosts local Bingo on Saturday nights so we armed ourselves with French numbers and joined in…just kidding. We drank the Swiss Miss (no joke) hot chocolate, then went up to the room to bed. Sunday
We checked out of the hotel this morning around 8:45 and made our way back to the train station. We stopped along the way a Le Pain Q’otidien (a chain) for a croissant and coffee – what we had craved the entire trip. They were delicious. Our 9:36 train was on time and we made it to Bruges -“Bridges” in Flemish - around 10:30. We walked from the train station to the city and immediately agreed that we liked Bruges more than Brussels. It’s called “the Venice of the North” for its canals and rivers. The views and sites were picturesque. Just like Brussels, there were restaurants and chocolate shops on every little street. One new addition to the retail scene was lace and tapestry shops. These two crafts are also big in Bruges. We made our way to the central area called Markt. There we climbed the steps (366) to the top of the belfry and “Museé de Brugge.” The views were vast – the steps were extremely narrow and windy.
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| Postcard perfect Bruges |
Our next stop was the chocolate museum. I had been looking forward to that stop all weekend. We strolled leisurely through the cute, quiet streets admiring the small colorful homes in an unassuming building that resembles an old church. We learned about the history of the cacao bean – how it was used as currency by the Aztecs, how it is harvested, where it grows, and that Louis XVI used to drink 50 cups a day. It was a very enlightening visit that ended in a chocolate demonstration and tasting – yum!
Eric and I were both getting a bit hungry and were still frozen at the core, so we decided to find a real restaurant. We ended up going to Cambrinus– which was busy and had and English menu. The menu was traditional Belgian with over a few hundred different types of beer. Eric ordered one that he was basically in love with – a blonde. (His second was good – an abbey beer – but not as good as the first). We ordered Trapetti cheese croquettes for an appetizer, Eric ordered a steak with the house specialty sauce with fries, and I ordered a goat cheese salad with bacon – safe. The food was decent. The croquettes were delish. Steak was good – sauce, ehh. Fries – again mediocre. One think I was surprised about was the reviews of the French fries. They were supposedly some of the best in the world. What we found was that they were soggy, yellow, and a little thicker than McDonalds’. Penelope’s were better. My salad was ok. The bacon wrapped around the goat cheese didn’t look cooked so I didn’t eat it, but Eric did and he actually liked it.
After lunch we took a long walk to the outskirts of the city. We saw two giant windmills and a part of the original city wall that used to surround the city. There was a still is a moat, the remnants of the wall and then the city itself. Our next goal was to find some good Belgian chocolate to eat and to bring to work for our colleagues. We ended up at the guidebook-recommended Depla where we bought walnut pralines and chocolate covered coffee beans. Walnut pralines were ok. Next shop – claiming the best hot chocolate – The Old Chocolate Shop. We bought some regular dark chocolate, some hot chocolate (not too shabby) and some disks of white, dark, and milk for the office. The last place we went, The Chocolate Line, we ended up having chocolate Grenache with a bit of pepper. Good. We bought some truffles – ehh, and an assortment for Thanksgiving dinner at Kathleen’s on Thursday. We then had about an hour so we strolled some more and made our way to the train station. At 5:35 we were on the train back to Brussels. At 7:00 we boarded the Eurostar and are now headed back to London. Good weekend in Belgium
We arrived Friday into Munich. We took the Bahnhof to Hauptbahnhof station (approx 30 minutes) and found our hotel – Tryp. Smoking indoors is still legal so it is a bit unbearable in the lobby of the hotel. We drop our things in the room and head out to find the Marienplatz to see the Chirstkindl Market. The stalls at the Christmas market consisted of ornaments, lebkuchen (a version of gingerbread), gluhwein (mulled wine), wooden crafts, sugared nuts, chocolate covered fruit and nuts, and a whole lot of brats & brezn (pretzels). We ate a ridiculous amount of pork. The ___ (orbrot) was the best part! The weather was bitter cold, but that didn’t stop us from being outside all day. We went to a traditional restaurant, Ratskeller (“City Hall”) under the giant Glockenspiel (cuckoo clock) for dinner. We both had sausage, some form of potatoes, and potato pancakes to start. 
Everything seems to close relatively early in Munich. But on our way back to the hotel we happened upon a skating rink where quite a few children (and a few adults) were enjoying the small outdoor rink.
