Belgium: The Land of Beer

In Belgium there is beer as far as the eye can see!  This is great for BK, but I'm not so keen on the beer.  I reached my max around Friday night.  Tasting is good, drinking is not so good.  Ick- it just makes me bloated and kind of gross...and I really don't like the taste either.  This may be too much information, but it is what it is.  I think it's more the taste, as I really have no problem with champagne (bubbles).

In Belgium we did something that we don't normally do- we took a couple of different tours to show us around Brussels and the surrounding area.  I was really hoping that these "tours" weren't a bunch of people loading onto a tour bus heading to who knows where.  I was pleasantly surprised...most of them only had around eight people and were a great way to see the city and surrounding areas.

Panoramic of Brussels main square

Beer Tour:
Friday afternoon we aptly started with a beer tour.  We started the tour at the oldest bar in Brussels, which also had all of the Trappist beers available to drink.  We picked either blonde, amber, or dark for our first beer, then got more info about the Trappist breweries and Belgium beers in general.  Here are the two that BK and I picked:

After this bar we went to Cantillon Brewery, one of the oldest in Brussels, where we had Lambic, which is beer without the bubbles.  It's quite sour, but I guess something you should try?  We also tried some of their other beers as well, which we didn't think were all that great either.  For the end of the tour we visited a bar and tried some other Belgium beers.  Keep in mind that throughout the tour, we were also walking through the city and getting a bit of the local culture and history as well.  It was fun, but not the best one we had.  Beer lovers may have different thoughts, but that is my take.

Discovering Flanders
I actually have no clue why this tour had this name, but we thought it sounded interesting, so we booked it.  The tour was run by Global Enterprises, which also ran the chocolate tour we did Sunday. On Saturday we went to Ostend, Bruges and Ghent- three cities outside of Brussels.  We rode the train to Ostend, which is on the coast.  It reminds me a lot of Long Island, and specifically the South Fork with it's cold and windy beaches.  We toured around, then stopped to have some fresh shrimp from the fish market along with a beer that complimented the shrimp.

Beer and shrimp by the harbor in Ostend

After Ostend, we hopped the train again and headed to Bruges.  This is a town that many people suggested we visit.  It is much smaller than Brussels and has quite a lot of charm. Our tour guide suggested that if you come back to Belgium one could easily spend a few days here exploring.  We did the boat tour, checked out the wall of beers, had some traditional Belgian food and of course, more beer.

Boat tour in Bruges

From Bruges, we caught the train to Ghent, which is a university town about 35 minutes from Brussels.  We actually liked Ghent better than Bruges- it was a little more active and bustling than the other two.  We toured the cathedral, looked through the oldest part of the city and checked out the river.  As a group we decided to head back to Brussels and have one final beer together.  I actually opted for a mojito- I couldn't take any more beer. The one drink quickly turned into more and we ended up hanging out with our new tour friends for drinks and dinner until around midnight.  Fun!

At Delirium Bar

Chocolate Tour

We did the beer tour for BK and the chocolate tour was for me.  Before coming to Brussels I told BK this was the one thing that I wanted to do, and it was well worth it.  We did a tour, tasting and demonstration with the same tour company from the day before. As a group we explored the city more then headed to an apartment to make our own chocolate creations.  In addition to creating our own we learned about how pralines are made and sampled some of the homemade ones.  Following the demonstration we visited some of the city's premier chocolate shops to sample some new and different varieties of chocolate and learn about how the various chocolatiers approach their creations.  The most unique thing we tasted was a champagne truffle with vanilla powder on the outside.

BK's chocolate creations

Brussels was lots of fun and packed with activities.  I would definitely recommend spending a couple days there if you get the chance.  We spent Sunday afternoon relaxing and enjoying other parts of city we had not yet seen.  Lucky for us Monday was yet another Swiss holiday, so we had a day to relax and recover from the trip.  We're off to Romania next, but not until June.  I'm sure there will be many more Swiss adventures to report on until then!