Greetings from Interlaken, Switzerland! Had a few days between touring Belgium and meeting up with friends in Italy, so I decided to stop in Switzerland on my way south. I know...it's a rough life!
My stops in Belgium were Bruges, Ghent, and Brussels.
Bruges is a small town in northwestern Belgium that is a popular tourist destination because of the great medieval architecture (the city center is a UNESCO world heritage sight). Aside from the architecture, there's plenty of cool things to do and see. While there, I visited a few churches. One church has a Michelangelo sculpture which is believed to be the only Michelangelo sculpture to exist outside of Italy. Another church I visited claims to have blood from Jesus that has been preserved over the years. It's one of the holiest relics of the catholic church and comes equipped with it's own version of knight Templar guardians. I'n living the Da Vinci code! Aside from churches, I stopped in at the local De Halve Maan brewery to take the tour and sample some local beer. It was the best brewery tour I've been on and the hoppy aroma alone was enough to make your knees wobble. There's a really cool French fry museum as well (Bruges is the home of the french fry...go figure), but I ran out of time before I could make it there. Bruges was such a cool little town that I will definitely add it to my list of places I want to return to one day.
Ghent was a day trip I made from Brussels. It's only a 30 minute train ride and unfortunately that was the best part. Ghent isn't necessarily a boring or bad place to visit, but it felt like a poor man's Bruges. The city looked really run down, there was construction everywhere, and it was lacking in cool medieval architecture. Old Ghent wasn't bad. There was a cool old castle, Castle of Counts, with a terror and weapons museum. There was a neat church that had an uncompleted tower. Saint Bavo's Cathedral was one of the better churches I have seen so far on the trip with a pretty famous altar known as The Mystic Lamb. Anyway, probably could have found a better way to spend my day...like drinking Duvel! Oh well, it happens.
Brussels was my final Belgian visit. I arrived in Brussels on a Saturday and was pleasantly surprised to learn that the hostel had free Internet. I inspected the Internet and discovered what I feared; a pretty strong filter on viewable content. Immediately I tried to formulate a plan on how I could stream the OSU-Baylor football game. After searching various live streaming sites, I found one that worked and I was able to watch most of the game which was exciting. I hadn't seen a game since the TU game in September. I warned you all, I'm a football addict.
Besides football Brussels was full of things to do. Some of the highlights were as follows.
I found perhaps the biggest street market in existence outside of Asia. It's hard to describe how huge it was (TWSS). I spent an hour just walking around and I still didn't see everything that was there. There were clothes, shoes, kebaps, waffles, electronics, perfumes, batteries, bathing products, fruits, vegetables, flowers, pastries, power tools, and more. My favorite part was the tobacco vendor who was selling "Cuban" cigars. Perhaps they were real, but Cuban cigars at a street market in Brussels didn't make much sense to me. I was tempted to buy them just to find out (I did some subsequent research and apparently fake Cubans are quite popular in Europe).
I took a chance on a local's tip on another place I visited. Parking garage 58! Yes, I visited a parking garage when I was in Brussels. I was told by some locals that if you go to the top of the parking garage you have a panoramic view of the city. I'm a sucker for local tips, so I decided to check it out. I found the garage, took the stairs to the top (because I'm an idiot), and 10 floors later I found an awesome view of the city. You can literally see everything from up there. It was raining pretty hard so I wasn't able to take many pictures, but it turned out to be a great spot and a great tip!
Another fun stop was the atomium and surrounding area. The atomium was built for the World Exhibition of 1958, and is composed of 9 spherical metal balls that represent an iron crystal magnified 165 billion times. You can enter the atomium and move from metal ball to metal ball via escalators, but the best view is from the outside looking in (or at in this case). This thing looks crazy from the outside! Much cooler then what I expected when I first heard about it. The atomium resides in Heysel park which has now claimed the title from the English Gardens as best park of my trip. This park is HUGE! There's hills, lots of trees, a carnival, a big restaurant area, a movie theater, and a sweet looking miniature museum that I unfortunately didn't have time to visit. Awesome area!
Belgium was awesome and probably my 3rd favorite stop behind Prague and Berlin. While I had a great time, I must confess that my true motivation for a visit was the beer. There are hundreds upon hundreds of beers brewed in Belgium. Every different method of brewing is used. Every different type of ingredient is used. And wow they are strong! While there's many beers in Belgium, the ones I was most interested in were the Trappist beers. Trappist beers are brewed by Trappist monks and out of the 171 Trappist monasteries in the world, only 7 brew beer; 6 of which are in Belgium. Some, such as Chimay, are widely available and popular in the US. Others, such as Westvleteren, are nearly impossible to get. Google it. It's seriously not easy to get especially since I don't have a car. Anyway, I was able to find 5 of the 7 beers, so of course I bought one of each and now they will trek with me through Europe awaiting the opportunity to quench my thirst.
Until next time, stay thirsty my friends!
Prost!
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