Belgium Trip - Part 1 of 2

It has been about 3 months since we moved to London, and aside from our numerous work-related trips of late, we have yet to leave the country on holiday (a nice British-ism that we have adopted). Lamely enough, our work schedules are both so hectic that we were forced to put time in our schedules to force ourselves to have some “quality time”. Anyway, after deciding that our only criterion for a vacation was that we didn’t want to travel to our destination by airplane, we decided on spending a long weekend in Belgium, which is only 2 hours and 20 minutes from London on the high-speed Eurostar train. Belgium proved to be just the break we needed - here’s a recount of what we did this past weekend, broken into 2 posts for easier reading...

Day 1: We met Thursday after work at London’s Waterloo station, where we caught the train for Brussels. After a couple of beers on the train (the first of MANY on this trip), Megan needed a nap, and I did a bit of lingering work that needed to be wrapped up before I could ease into vacation mode. We arrived at Gare Midi (the international train station) in Brussels pretty late, so we just took a taxi to our hotel, giving me the first chance of this trip to use my high school French: “uh... Je voudrais… uh… aller… à l’hôtel Sheraton Four Points (insert silent prayer that the taxi driver understands me here)???”.

This first night in Brussels, we stayed at a generic hotel, because we couldn’t find any B&B’s that had availability. However, this place had plenty of charm, as you will see from this photo of the “art” hanging on the wall of our room. Remember people, this was not a flea-bag, one-star place with the bathroom at the end of the hall. It was actually a ridiculously expensive Starwood hotel, so it caught us a bit off guard to see this hanging on the wall. After all of this excitement, we were exhausted after a full day at the office followed by our trip, so we ordered room service and went to bed.

Day 2: We slept in and decided that we would spend the day getting our bearings in Brussels. Megan had never been to the city, and it had been about 7 years (and innumerable brain cells) since I had been in the city. So we started our day by wandering through the neighborhood around our hotel, grabbing coffee and making our way over to the Mannekin Pis (Aside: If you don’t know what this is, it’s a ridiculous, yet iconic statue of a little boy peeing. The Belgians dress him up in seasonal costumes – when we saw him, he was dressed like Christopher Columbus, presumably for Columbus Day, which I had always assumed was an American holiday, but whatever. Like I said, it’s ridiculous, but to go to Brussels and not see him is like going to Paris and not seeing the Eiffel Tower.). From there, it was just a short walk to the Grand Place, which was Brussels’ central market several centuries ago, but is now very touristy. The buildings around the square used to be guild houses; some of the notable ones around the square formerly housed the baker’s and the hat-makers guilds. We had lunch at a non-descript, yet typical Belgian restaurant in the Grand Place, where we paid a small fortune for a couple of beers and salads.

After lunch, we did some more aimless walking, taking in the sights, grabbing a wafel (a sugar-coated waffle – absolutely delicious), and generally hanging out. It was absolutely wonderful to not have to think about work, or household chores, or any of the day-to-day b.s. that tends to consume any couple. We got to actually talk – about things that really mattered, o r that didn’t. But there were none of the “what do you want me to get at the grocery store?”, or “did you pay that bill?” conversations. What a luxury! We got to have some of these conversations at one of the oldest bars in Brussels, a place called Mort Subite – such a notable bar, that the Belgians have even named a type of beer after it!

Later that afternoon, we headed back to the Sheraton, picked up our bags, and made the journey across Brussels to the Court Guest House, a lovely B&B just outside of central Brussels. The proprietors of the hotel (Joris and Michel) live upstairs from the inn, which was the site of the original Godiva factory in Brussels. Throughout the common areas of the inn, they have displayed a wonderful collection of photographs of workers producing chocolates in what became their home, as well as other Godiva memorabilia from that era.

We had dinner that night at a restaurant near St. Catherine’s church, where we enjoyed Belgian beers, moules frites (mussels with fries, a Belgian specialty), and the company of a couple who were on vacation from Georgia. Another early night for us, so we took the metro (Brussels’ incredibly efficient subway system) back to our inn.

More in part 2…