Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Beer and waffles in Belgium

For some reason I couldn't sleep so ended up sleeping maybe 3 hours and was very nasty to be around on Wednesday. Plus our plane was delayed and I was hungry but refused to buy overpriced prepackaged semi-plastic food at the airport. I started biting Beza and I think he was quite happy when our plane finally arrived. (Photos: Mannekin Pis; Jannekin Pis)

Things improved in Brussels. I thought we'd booked an upmarket hostel but it turned out to be a fantastic guest house and the owner was really friendly and helpful. Visited Mannekin Pis, his less aesthetically pleasing sister Janneke and had our first waffle and first litre of cherry beer.

Went to Ghent the following afternoon. We were going to stay but couldn't find cheap accommodation so caught a train to Brugges and stayed the night there instead. Brugges was so idyllic it was almost scary. Like a picture perfect village in some horror film, where all the people are friendly and there are horse-drawn carts (which there were in Brugges) and picturesque houses and suddenly all the children turn evil and decapitate the neighbours. (Photo: in Ghent)

The weather was basically shit the whole time in Belgium except on Saturday which we spent in Antwerp. In the morning we went to an open market and had snail soup (well, I had snail soup and Beza watched with disgust) and in the afternoon we went to a legal graffiti park and had a picnic of horse jamon (like pork but leaner, very interesting) on bread.

The most disappointing thing was we only managed to fit in two waffles each in five days because we were too busy eating/doing other things.

And on the way home, the plane was delayed again so we missed our train and had to catch one three hours later. Which then broke down in some God-forsaken village for an hour and a half. And had to backtrack for some unfathomable reason. BUT we went back to the station on Monday and got a full refund on our tickets, ha!

1 comment:

Monica Tan said...

Have you seen 'In Bruges'? With Colin Farrell? It's fantastic, really funny. And yes, set in Bruges.