Belgium - the Waffles and Wanderings of Wharton and Wallbridge

Having booked my next lot of travels, I thought it was about time I update this blog with my travels since my return from Hong Kong (just to confirm, I did return safely from there)!  My apologies for the delay, these posts are backdated.  I'll start with my trip to Belgium that took place in October last year (2012).

Thursday 18th
Today I got up at some stupidly early time, made my sandwiches for the day and headed off to meet the lovely Miss Wharton who would be my travel buddy for the next 5 days. Having never spent more than 24 hours together, we weren't quite sure how this trip was going to work out but here goes...

We arrived at the Eurostar terminal in plenty of time. I managed, as I always do, to leave something behind in the departure lounge - my coat - and there was no way back down. Katrina helpfully spotted an employee who we hoped could help with my predicament. "Why don't you ask this lady?" she said as we approached, so that's what I did. Imagine my surprise when I was met with such a gruff voice... this was turning out to be more like Thailand already! It was a guy, just for the record, but he did have very feminine features and I too had thought he was a girl as we approached him.

After an early start with a ridiculous amount of public transport, I had finally conquered my first fear.... the Euro tunnel! Never been through it before, never wanted to. Turns out it's fine actually. We then arrived in Brussels, map in hand, only to discover that road signs are not the Belgian's forte. Well, when you do waffles, chocolate and beer so well, I guess you've got to have a weakness somewhere. Below is just one example of what the Belgian's consider to be adequate signage.

Can you see the Street Sign?

Goodness help anyone who's trying to read these signs in a car... perhaps that's why there's such gridlock in Belgium's cities.

We eventually get our bearings, trying not to look too much like two lost female tourists in an otherwise male-dominated part of town. We knew we'd booked a cheap hotel. We knew it wasn't the best part of town. What we hadn't quite realised was it was basically 'Little Turkey'. I'm pretty sure we didn't meet one local Belgian on our route from the station to our hotel but we eventually made it there unscathed.

We dumped our bags and headed into Brussels for our first Belgian treat. And thus was born Wharton and Wallbridge's first phrase of the tour: "What time is it?" "It's Belgian treat time!"



Less than 24 hours in and we have sourced our first, very yummy, truly Belgian treat, the Waffle.

Mmmmm mmmmmm. We shared it (that was the last time we shared sweet treats).  Then we had a general wander and a hot chocolate avec chantilli cream. More Mmmm mmmm! As we chatted about our experience so far, and our slightly-less-than-positive opinion about American travellers, it soon dawned on Katrina that the guy sitting next to us was American (or maybe Canadian) and we hastily made our exit and headed back to the hotel. Or attempted to at least. Yet again, our map let us down. If the road had a streetname, the map inevitably didn't. If the map had a streetname, it didn't always match the road. In the end an American couple helped us. Oh the irony. As if this wasn't bad enough given our day of foot-in-mouth incidents, they then explained how we should avoid the area we were staying in, and keep an eye on our belongings as it was quite dodgy. So that was an encouraging end to our first day!

Friday 19th
Day 2. We filled up on complimentary breakfast (although we weren't very complimentary about said breakfast) and then headed to the station in search of a train to Bruges. I'd been told how nice Bruges is, and we'd worked out it can't be too far away - Belgium's not exactly huge, so how hard could it be? Very easy, evidently. Between us we realised we couldn't remember the French for 'return' so shamefully asked for our tickets in English. We jumped on a double decker train and within an hour we were in the lovely tourist town of Bruges.

First stop was a canal ride. Then we headed around some chocolate shops and generally took in the sights until we found the... most.... amazing.... dessert... place! It was basically liquid chocolate in a glass!

Finally, we decided that having arrived in Belgium and bought some waffles and chocolate already, it would be rude not to try a Belgian beer. Turns out I actually quite liked the dark one I had which I was most surprised by given how little I like beer.  It's all about the glasses apparently.

It soon started raining and we were sat outside, so rather than have free refills of watered down beer, we withstood as much as we could before making a run for our train back to Brussels. All in all, a very pleasant day seeing the sights of Bruges.

Saturday 20th
Day 3. We decided to stick in Brussels again today and see some of the sights. We thought we'd head for the Royal Place and soon saw a building towering above the other buildings with a golden crown on top.

The Royal Place?

Looked a bit run down to me, but we'd read that it was only open to tourists during the summer months, so we didn't think much of it. We went in search of some parkland that we'd seen on the map, with a view to do some people-watching. As we wandered around and got our bearings, we were amazed that we couldn't find this park, and figured that maybe when the Belgian's refer to park, they just mean open areas. The area we'd arrived in, which we were pretty sure was correct despite the road names not matching up, was just a concreted open space with a tree or two dotted around. The guidebook did say it was tree-lined, so perhaps that is what they meant.

Thankfully, Katrina wasn't as easily satisfied as me and has a far better sense of direction too.  She set about trying to ascertain where we were on the map and why the roads we could see weren't tallying with the dreaded map. She eventually deduced that we'd walked quite some way in the opposite direction to the park we were aiming for. Oh dear. We wandered through some back streets and finally found a park... but it wasn't the one we were looking for. We kept walking until we saw what looked more like the park we'd been expecting. So it turns out it's right opposite the Royal Place! 'How did you miss it then?' you may well ask, given that we had already taken pictures of the Royal Place. It helps if you have the right tourist attraction before you take your bearings for map reading... I believe THIS is the actual Royal Place:

THE Royal Place

Doh! It definitely looks a lot more grandeur than the first place we arrived at.  I've no idea to this day what that first building was by the way, so if anyone can help me out feel free!

Oh, and as if it wasn't embarrassing enough that we went to the wrong tourist attraction. Katrina pointed out another potential tourist spot that we should check out.  She started reading all the information to me about what we could do and see there.  It all sounded very familiar, like we'd already seen all that stuff.... not only did we manage to find the wrong Royal Place, we also managed to wander around a rather substantial tourist area and completely miss its significance. We are excellent travellers, honest!

In the end we decided it would be safest to head back to the 'safety' of our hotel before we headed out for a traditional Belgian treat of Frites avec sauce. This time Katrina managed to order in French, except for not being able to answer whether we were sitting there or taking away. Thankfully a friendly wave from me just at the right time enabled the guy to see where we were sitting. Crisis averted.

Brussels becomes a different place at night and now we had our bearings it was much easier to stop and enjoy some of the architecture on display.  They go on about it a lot in all the guidebooks and tonight I could finally see why.

We headed back to the hotel and planned our next day. Not before Katrina had purchased some snacks to keep her going...







Sunday 21st
Our penultimate day, and our last full-day in Belgium. We decided to head back to Bruges with the intention of getting a cycle tour or a boat excursion to a place called Damme.  We were pleasantly surprised to learn that Belgium offer half price tickets at weekends, so our trip to Bruges was much cheaper than on Friday.  What a shame we hadn't known this in advance - we'd have had more budget for Belgian treats!


50% off did come at a cost - it was a slower journey to Bruges. We arrived too late for the guided cycle tour and the boat excursion stopped the weekend before. We ummed and urred for a bit, not really sure what to do and whether we were confident enough to take bikes out on our own, unguided, with the Belgian driving we'd witnessed so far. We took a risk though, and I'm very glad we did. We hired two bikes for the afternoon and headed off in search of Damme - about 4-5kms away from Bruges. It was probably one of my highlights. Lovely scenic views, although the bikes were quite old fashioned.  Our cycling was mainly incident-free except for one slightly regrettable moment on our way back.  As I say, the bikes were quite old-fashioned so we gently pottered along.  We made the decision to overtake a couple who had just pulled out at a junction in front of us, only to discover that they were going much faster than we'd realised.  We were committed now though, so we had to pedal full-pelt to try and save our dignity a little.  It probably didn't work but it made for a fun ride home along the canal and we made it back safely.  Oh, and Damme itself was very picturesque with its windmill and canal.  And of course, it also offered plenty of Belgian treats!

We made it back safely to Bruges, despite being a little more out of breath from the speedy cycling.

Monday 22nd
Our final day in Brussels.  We were getting the Eurostar back later that afternoon so decided we'd like to spend our final day doing something touristy that Brussels was known for.  So we headed for the European Parliament for a tour!

Or, we attempted to.  They weren't doing the tours this day, so we wandered around the outside and found some nice parkland instead. We sat in the park contemplating what we should do now that the sun was out and the Parliament tour was off.  And then came one of my favourite sights of Belgium.... an ice cream van!  There was a school near this park and the ice cream van was opportunist in arriving in time for their break.  So Katrina and I queued up with the school kids and after ascertaining that the guy didn't speak English (which I checked in French), I expertly ordered our ice-creams in my 'meilleur Français'... expert that is, until I realised I don't know the French for Cone or Cup.  Whoever said that it is rude to point has obviously never had to communicate in a foreign language - it has its place and can be very effective!

Chocolat et Banane glace à 'a tray' (plateu?)

On our way back to the main part of the city, there was some kind of commotion and we were stopped outside a very official looking building (possibly MoD-related) by a guard. There was a media frenzy on the other side of the road as all these VIP-looking vehicles arrived.  I didn't know what was going on or who was in town, and we never found out, but it gave us a bit of excitement after our disappointing Parliamentary visit.

More wandering around Brussels, buying gifts and a final Belgian Treat for ourselves (we were still not sharing by this point, it turns out Belgian Waffles aren't too much for one person after all, even after ice cream) and it was soon time for us to go catch our train home.  We headed back to the hotel to collect our bags and then spent some time sat outside the train station.

We chose Belgium as a cheap city break when we realised a sunny holiday was out of our budget.  I had been told beforehand how cold Belgium can get because it's so flat and therefore not sheltered from the wind.  I brought all my layers and soon regretted it - now I could see why...

We were sad to leave Belgium and all its treats behind but it has been a lovely few days spent in a new country, and we have survived more than 24 hours in a row with each other very successfully!  All in all a fantastic result and a new travel buddy found.


Goodbye Belgium, we'll miss you and your waffles!