Oh Belgium...let me count the ways...

This past four-day vacation, J and I went to Belgium.  We learned a lot on our journey.  Allow me to recount.

July 13

We left early in the morning...ok, that's a lie.  We left probably 5 hours after we intended to.  Well, we both needed the sleep.  We were up until midnight the night before.  The good news: it's only a 4 hour drive to Antwerp, our home base in Belgium this trip, and the hotel didn't check in until 2pm.  I found a killer deal on LonelyPlanet.com...quite randomly actually.  When I compared to the advertized rates at the hotel, it looks like we paid about half of the typical rate.

It rained the majority of the day and was overcast the entire day.  Enroute to Antwerp, we saw a mannequin in the middle of the highway, dressed as a construction worker, with his hand holding a flag and slowly swaying it back and forth.  We both did a double-take and laughed.  Little did we know that this situation would show up again later on.

We got to Antwerp, and sadly missed several of the things we wanted to see because most of the sights were closed.  We did, however, see the Guild Halls at the Grote Markt, checked out Brabo fountain with the Roman chucking the hand of a giant, the exterior of the very large and sprawled out cathedral which was surprisingly surrounded by row building so only the main gates could be seen, and had some crazy awesome tapas for dinner.


This is St. Ursula's Church, literally merged with the surrounding buildings.

As with many of the cities in Belgium, there were canals everywhere.

This was is the basement of the Crowne Plaza Hotel.  Upon excavation to begin construction, they found the remnants of not one, but two older buildings.  The first (the bold dotted lines on the layout below) were believed to have been city walls built around 300AD.  The second was the foundation for a church of which much of the foundation was completely intact as well as some tombs.  The artwork found indicates that the church was built around 1300AD.  They allowed the hotel to be built provided that the hotel allow the public to see a display of the old site for free.

Here is the inside of the old church foundations, now carpeted and being used as a reception hall!

Here's some of the outside of the church foundation wall.  The older city wall was visible to the left of this picture.

We learned that restrooms ain't free in Belgium, at least very rarely.  The public ones in Antwerp, Brussels, and Bruges cost about a half a euro per person for use.

We then crashed and planned on getting up early the next morning for our trip to Bruges.

July 14

Major fail at getting up early.  We got to Bruges, but literally looped around the town center 5 times before finding parking, which was actually pretty well placed.  At this point, J was about to lose it with me as it was already the early afternoon.  There was, however, a flea market going on, so she immediately felt better about that.

Oh yeah, it rained almost the entire time this day too.

Bruges immediately had a more french feel to it.


We also swung by the Bell Tower, had some fries with absolutely AWESOME curry sauce, and saw more crazy awesome Guild Halls in the Grote Markt.  We also saw a lot of really nice medieval art at the Groeninge Museum, went through a very pretty courtyard, could only see part of the interior of the cathedral due to a wedding and then a mass, and then went on a beer tour, and saw a lot of swans.  The beer tour was interesting in that I understood absolutely all of the chemistry and tools involved, and the interior smelled quite potently of hops, malt, and beer.  Oh, and there were more random mannequins in the brewery.  J liked the beer that the brewery made (free as a part of the tour).  Bear in mind that the majority of this town is completely intertwined with canals, which give it a more open feel too.


One of the canals that weaves through Bruges.

Another view of the canals.  The city Bell Tower is on the right.  I also mused at the house construction being so low to the water level.

Here was a little patch of land where swans and ducks claimed their own little property.

I guess Bruges is artist central.  We saw a lot of random artists painting in various places in the city.

We had some crazy awesome italian at Carlito's, and then went back to crash again.  Failure to get up early tomorrow was not an option.

My personal favorite part of this leg of the trip was ordering the fries.  While waiting in line, there were five old ladies in front of me speaking german, two young men speaking some asian language (J was guessing Korean), I ordered in English (as did the Koreans and the Italians), the young family behind me spoke either spanish or italian, and the vendors understood and spoke all of it, including french and flemish (a native Belgian language similar to german) to each other.  It was crazy that I could even understand that these were the different languages being spoken.  It would be even crazier if I could speak all of them.

We thought about seeing the north coast before leaving as it was only 10km away, but because of the rain, we decided against it.  We'll save that for another trip.

July 15 - J's Birthday

As part of J's birthday, I found that coincidentally, the second largest flea market in Europe takes place in Tongeren, Belgium...only a one hour drive away from Antwerp, and occurs every single Sunday morning.

It rained all morning...again...which actually turned out to be a good thing in a way.

The "Antithek" was HUGE.  It consisted of tons of people all selling a bunch of old stuff at their own little stands.  The market sprawled around the perimeter of three solid city blocks and completely filled the interior of three large buildings (a town hall, one floor of a parking ramp, and the stretch of a mall).  Items being sold ranged from furniture, to silverware, old pocket watches, rings, African statues, ivory tusks, Lenin communist Russia memorabilia (my favorite), wooden clocks, very old post cards, records, clothing, leather working tools, door hinges and fixtures, paintings...you name it, and they pretty much had it.  That includes more mannequins :)

Lots of rain, which was the standard for every day in Belgium.

One shot from inside the town hall.  Sorry for the bad picture quality.

I personally like this piece, but I certainly did not "500 euro" like it.

There were TONS of old postcards and pictures for J to peruse through.  And peruse she did!

Here's a shot from the parking lot level.

Lots of neat little knick-knacks.  If I knew how to repair pocket watches, I could make a killing!

The good thing about the rain is that it was a great filter for determining crap items from quality items.  A lot of people just let their furniture, paintings, and wares get rained on...huge indicator that it was worth nothing. Having been tempted by many items, but ultimately buying nothing, it was still well into the morning, so we decided to check out Brussels.

Again, finding some prime parking, we checked out the Grote Markt, the most impressive Guild Halls of the entire trip, the Galerie du St. Hubert, Restaurant Row where servers lived up to their reputations of aggressively marketing to touristy passers-by, and we saw the infamous Mannequin Pis.  We then rotated onto Upper Town and saw the under-construction Justice Hall (friggin' HUGE), the Atomium (from a distance), one of the cathedrals, a disappointing but big garden, and a decent view of the Lower Town.  We bought a TON of chocolate, and were pleased to find a t-shirt sold in a souvenir shop saying, "It rains in Belgium."  We couldn't agree more.  I was beginning to notice that the locals were a lot like the locals in Fort William, Scotland: it rains the light, misty rain so frequently, that they don't even bother with umbrellas, rain jackets, or hats.

The Galerie du St. Hubert was a really cool outdoor/indoor mall stretch.  It looked like a gorgeous central train station without the trains or the seedy people.

This was Brussels town hall at Grote Markt (essentially town square, literally translated as Great Market).

Some of the Guild Halls...

More of the Guild Halls...

The Guild Halls are so impressive because, after all being leveled during one of the many wars, they were all rebuild with the greatest grandeur possible.  How did they afford all of it?  Well, diamonds and gold are the major trade in Belgium, so it was easy for them to come up with the money.

We witnessed our first sunlight in Belgium that afternoon.  It lasted only about 5 minutes, but it was kind of a surreal moment.

Some statues killing other statues while some clerics sit by and watch :)

The famous Mannequin Pis.  Yes, he's literally pissing, and everyone seems happy about it.

This was a pretty neat garden, with a great fountain and lots of statues of all of the local legends...most notably, the guy who first put the round earth into a flat map.

I couldn't help myself.  I thought this shop name was awesome!

We had dinner at an Indian Restaurant, of all cuisines, and the food was fantastic.  The head server was very friendly to us.

One thing I also noticed in Brussels, was that the vendors were so good at figuring out peoples' native languages, and speaking them, that they literally just had to look at you and could figure out where you were from.  J and I were pinned as Americans immediately by the vendors.  I also saw them pin down French and Flemish tourists.  It was pretty impressive.

We went to back to the hotel, and the Ramada Hotel staff (who all spoke very good English), referred to me as "Mister Zhager."  I now understand the joke my dad always used to have around the house naming us "Zhazhay."  It made me smile and remember my dad.

July 16

No screwing around now.  We had to check out at noon.  We succeeded, and decided last minute to visit Ghent, since we were in the neighborhood.  It was a good call.

Unlike the other cities we visited, it had a more college and less touristy atmosphere, actually had a castle, and had a free bathroom in the parking garage.  We got out of the parking garage to find that we were immediately under a temporary amusement park.  Well, wouldn't be hard to find our way back to the car this time!

We spent the day wandering around the town.  We started with some serious seafood lunch.  J had a kebab of meat and I had a glorious seafood soup.  Oh yeah, it was raining all day this day too, and again, the locals were easy to pick out.

Pretty much a mish-mash of different types of seafood, but it was the best soup/stew I had in a long while.

We toured the Gravensteen Castle which was mediocre compared to other castles in some ways, but impressive in other ways: it was the first we've seen to still have a moat and the castle actually functioned more as a dungeon run by a governor or Count.

Gravensteen Castle...

Seriously, why were the handles so huge?  I don't even know if I could hold a sword as tall as me.

I liked how this stairwell looked.  J thought that it looked a lot like the stairwells should be in Winterfell in the Game of Thrones.  From that moment, we decided that we discovered Winterfell.

I joked about this being the red-leaved weirwood at Winterfell.

We did a little shopping, shared a waffle, played some cards in a nice cafe, then headed home.  Oh, we also got to say goodbye to the mannequin construction worker on the way.

I'll post some of the pictures that J took too ASAP.