Brugge and Antwerp

Late night Kebabs

It was 'round midnight by the time we checked into the hotel in Brugge, after close to an hour getting lost and noisily dragging our suitcase along the cobblestones in the middle of the night ...

Having not bought any decent food for the Eurostar trip, we were forced to eat expensive rubbish snacks (some biscuits, cruddy coffee, etc) so we hadn't had dinner.

After dropping our luggage and getting keys, we decided to go for a wander ... and agreed to eat at the first place we find that was open ...

... which turned out to be a kebab joint!

Luckily for us, it wasn't just a greasy takeaway kebab joint like the ones you find in London -- it was a nice sit-down place (tho quite a few people came in for takeaways through the night) and our food was delicious! Naturally, as with all Belgian food, the kebabs came with a large pot of fries ...

 

 

We slept poorly that night. By "we" I meant me and Muffin. Adrian snored and farted loudly throughout the night. Must remember to put him in his own room next time ... :B

Brugge, land of chocolate and waffles!

Having slept in (Adrian's alarm clock was still on London time) we missed the breakfast that was meant to come with our Bed and Breakfast. So we took a wander around town in search of waffles ...

 

 

We didn't find waffles, but we found someplace even more decadant ... De Proeverij.

After that we had to walk it all off so we could eat more later on ...

 

We still weren't hungry enough so we decided to climb up all 366 steps of the Belfry tower ...

 

Still not entirely starving enough, we decided to eat anyway ... just so we can squeeze in dinner at dinnertime.

We were hankering for mussels, so we went to Eetcafe de Vuyst as suggested in the Timeout Guide. Alas, mussels weren't on that menu ... damned Timeout Guide!

It was good that we didn't get to eat mussels then, in a way, as we managed to find somewhere even better -- we asked the hotel staff where the best place for mussels were and he told us to try Gouden Carpel (the Golden Carp).

But first, more walking to try work up an appetite for dinner ...

More touristy stuff in Brugge

We managed to wake up on time to eat the continental breakfast in the hotel -- consisting of a basket of bread, some jam, smoked fish, cold meats (ham, parma, salami, etc.) and cheeses. Our first true breakfast in a long time!

After that we had to walk off the food to make room for more food ... We'd done two of the 3 walking guides (see below) and so we were up to doing the North walk.

We saw ...

 

... and we ate ...

We had a seafood lunch at Chagall and then moved a few shops down for waffles at Delices de Bruges.

Cycling to Zeebrugge

As Adrian was no longer staying with us, we were moved to another bedroom -- alas this time the room was 3x smaller than our first ... and so was the bathroom :( I also figured out that what I thought previously was a heater was actually a FAN -- so we could sleep with the windows closed (there were mosquitos about and it got really hot at night).

As we slept better that night (minus Adrian's excessive farting and snoring) we managed to wake up for breakfast on our own ...

Then we borrowed the hotel's bicycles and set off for our first cycle since we moved from Sydney 9 months ago!

 

We finally made it to our destination ... Zeebrugge.

 

We had lunch in an Irish pub called The Old Barrel ... nothing to write home about :( But there was nothing much to choose from around here ...

We saw lots of these little huts by the beach ... people store their beach gear in there.

 

There wasn't much else to do in Zeebrugge so we decided to head back -- I couldn't stop thinking about the waffles in Delices de Bruges so we wanted to get back to Brugges before it closed ...

Along the way back we found some cows ...

 

As Adrian was no longer around to force us to eat 3 or more meals a day, we were back to our normal irregular eating pattern -- i.e. eat whenever we're hungry. The waffles were our last meal of the day.

We also got sunburnt -- we went to bed early, red, hot and very tired ...

Off to Antwerp

We had breakfast at the hotel and then checked out ... and made our way to the train station, stopping by a Dumon chocolate shop along the way.

 

We found our way to Miller's Dream Bed and Breakfast without any problems. As you can see, it's very spacious. We've calculated that this accommodation turned out to be cheaper than our rent in London!

 

After resting / lazing about, we decided to walk around ...

 

We'd had enough of walking, so we headed to a UGC to watch the Simpsons, at 8.20EUR a ticket -- so much more cheaper than in London. However, having subtitles of two other languages at the bottom of the screen was pretty distracting ...

Later that night, we headed to Chinatown to fulfil our rice cravings. We ate at City Palace on Van Wesenbekestraat ... somehow we managed to order a newly discovered favorite dish that Adrian's always ordered for us at Crispy Duck back in London (pork with preserved vegetables), and also a vegetable stir-fry with squid. We even got complimentary prawns! Mmmm ...

Exploring Antwerp

We got discounted rates for our accommodation because we weren't getting any breakfast for our B&B -- which is good because we're never hungry in the morning anyway.

We bought a three-museum pass, and the first stop was Museum Plantin-Moretus -- which was a publishing house and found lots of illustrations both strange and amazing.

 

We managed to work up an appetite, so decided to have some Belgian Fries ...

 

This was LUNCH. Mine was a pepper sauce, while Muffin had just plain mayonnaise ...

Next stop was the Rockoxhuis Musuem followed by Stadsbibliotheek.

After that we headed to Aquatopia (an aquarium) -- which felt like a ripoff at 12.45EUR each and the displays weren't very good ...

We headed back to the B&B for a rest, and then came out to dinner in Zuid somewhere.

Dinner was in a fantastic restaurant called Bizzie Lizzie -- the waiter was very helpful in recommending the best local beer, and I ordered a grilled salmon and Muffin ordered a delicious Osso Bucco. For desserts, I had some iced coffee and Muffin had a lemon sorbet in vodka. Would definitely come back here again.

 

Last day in Antwerp

That packed up and checked out that morning ... and headed to the photography museum. After that we walked around looking for someplace to eat and settled on a cafe on Hoogstraat. Nothing exciting -- I had a pretty salty and creamy salmon pasta and Muffin had some disgustingly yellow chicken curry sandwich ...

After brunch we headed to the Grote Markt for a 40 minute ride on the horse drawn tram (at 5EUR each).

 

You certainly get a different view from up here -- we noticed quite a lot of things that were higher than street level ...

Time to say goodbye to the land of chocolate and waffles -- we lugged our suitcase laden with stinky old clothes and an additional bag filled with chocolates halfway across town to Antwerp Centraal. Did more last minute chocolate purchasing, then we went on the train to Brussels.

We were debating whether we should spend the extra two days in Belgium in Brussels or Antwerp. Luckily we picked Antwerp -- the view of Brussels from the train ride wasn't entirely impressive. Quite a few buildings were neglected and delapidated, and we could see plenty of dodgy going-ons happenning in the streets. Also spotted was a mini-London Eye ...

We would come back to Belgium again -- the food and people were fantastic, and we still had some stuff to do in Antwerp, but we'd probably avoid Brussels ...