You might be wondering why we were already travelling so soon after returning from Pakistan. It was mainly just a timing issue combined with the need to use some non-refundable train tickets. I was initially supposed to travel to a city in the south part of the Netherlands for a conference for work in November. My husband was going to join me when the conference ended, and we were going to spend a couple of days in the area so that I could see where he used to live when he was posted to the region and also meet some friends of his that still live there. But when the omicron variant of Covid-19 became rampant, the conference was cancelled, and the train tickets we had bought were non-refundable. I could have got my tickets reimbursed through work, but since we couldn't get that for my husband, and Eurostar allows you to change your date of travel indefinitely without penalty, we decided we would just use up the tickets at another time and both get a little trip away, work conference or not. We planned to then go just before Christmas so that I could see the Christmas markets, but we ended up having to cancel that for the same reason as the conference was cancelled, and in fact, the omicron variant was even more widespread at that point. So we decided to postpone the trip several months later, hoping by that time it was safe to travel. Indeed it was, but it also meant that it would be easier to travel to Pakistan due to reduced restrictions, and the timing just happened to work out that way. So we finally made good on our tickets and went off to Brussels and Amsterdam for just a few days.
Day 1
As much as I've travelled, there are still a lot of places I haven't been and experiences I haven't had. I actually hadn't been to either Belgium or the Netherlands before, and I also had never crossed between the UK and continental Europe by train, always only by plane, so I was really excited about all those new experiences. Taking the Eurostar to the continent was really interesting. It's a great way to see the countryside of the countries you travel through--in this case France and Belgium. The train stopped at Lille, Antwerp, and Rotterdam (and only Lille on the journey back to London from Brussels, for whatever reason), but even with the stops, it still felt like we weren't on there for very long. The Eurostar has gone as fast as 334.7 km/h, and although I think our fastest was just shy of 300 km/h, it's still pretty impressive! And because the train is electric, it's pretty quiet, and you feel like you aren't moving that fast.
When we arrived, we checked into our hotel and then decided to go out and explore. My husband wanted to see the Jean Claude van Damme (a.k.a. the Muscles from Brussels) statue, and we found it situated on a meridian in a very inconspicuous place. There's a mall that's been built across the street recently, and there were other places of business around it, but you would expect it to be in a park or somewhere near the city centre in a tourist zone. No, it is quite out of the way; we took a bus to get there.
Speaking of the bus, we found it interesting that you can't purchase multiple tickets when you get on. You pay using your contactless method of payment if you don't have whatever their equivalent of a transit pass is, but you are only allowed to make one purchase per payment method. We only have one card that we can use to access our account that we can transfer euros into, so we ended up only paying one fare per trip. But the interesting thing is that no one seemed to care. We saw others getting on buses without tapping anything, so in the end, we felt like we never did figure out the public transportation system there. Maybe there was some sort of day pass we could have got, but the website for the public transportation system wasn't too forthcoming in how to get around as someone who only needs limited access to the system.
Anyway, once we saw the statue, we went back to the city centre to the Grand-Place. My husband says that every city in Belgium he has been to as a city centre square like that, although given that Brussels is the capital, perhaps theirs is the grandest. In any case, the buildings in the square have dates on them from 1697-1699, mainly, with a few additions from a little later. It seems that these are all dates from modern upgrades at that time, but the buildings in those spots have been there ofr centuries longer. The area has been declared by the UN as place of Outstanding Universal Value. They explain it much better than I can as to why, so I encourage you to read more about it, as otherwise I'm just re-telling the same info. The place was pretty crowded with tourists, so the pandemic is really fading away as far as day to day life goes for most people, though the illness is still kicking around rather heavily.
From there, we headed to Notre Dame du Sablon, a beautiful Gothic church that could be viewed from a garden across the street, making it appear like it's part of the church grounds. You can view it from the other side as well, but there's a parking area in front of it, and the foreground is not quite as attractive as the garden! As it turns out, the garden is a garden of sculptures, depicting men who stood up to Spanish tyranny. This was new information to me about the Spanish in this region. Our education system, even as Eurocentric as it is, doesn't go into detail about the formation of European nations as it has less relevance to Canada, so I was curious about this revelation. I always enjoy when I come across new information that makes me want to do some research because I get to learn even more! Anyway, I learned that the Spanish heir to the throne, John of Asturias, married Margaret of Austria (of the Habsburg Empire), and John's sister, Joanna, married Philip I, Margaret's brother. However, John died, and Joanna ended up becoming heir to the Spanish throne, and she and her husband ended up united and ruling over both Spanish and Habsburg territories, which included Flanders and some of the Netherlands kingdoms prior to the union of the 17 Dutch kingdoms that eventually formed the Netherlands as we know it today. After the Battle of Waterloo, the winning countries (Britain, Austria, Russia, and Prussia) met in the Vienna Convention in 1815 to discuss a variety of topics. It seems that the creation of Belgium was also up for discussion, but in the end, it was decided to give the United Kingdom of the Netherlands the entire territory of what eventually became Belgium. As people in the region were Catholic, compared to the protestants in the north, and the French-speaking territory of Wallonia refused to adopt the Dutch language, these factors eventually led to revolt, resulting in the creation of Belgium as a nation in 1830. So control of the region at what time was Spanish, then Dutch, and then they gained independence.
For dinner we wanted to try local Belgian food, which has been characterised by some as French quality with German portions. We had found a restaurant that serves some traditional dishes, my husband having a delicious chicken and mushroom stew, and I having rabbit stew. Both were very tasty, and both came with fries. Did I mention I ate a lot of fries on this trip? It seems that both the Netherlands and Belgium offer a lot of fries with their menus!
Day 2
The following morning we decided to go for a walk around 8am and find the comic wall area. I didn't know that Belgium has produced a lot of well-known and well-loved comics, including The Smurfs, Asterix, and Tintin! I had no idea these were Belgian productions. We learned that there are several murals in a particular area of Brussels, and as stores wouldn't open until at least 10 to look for some Tintin souvenirs, and our train to Amsterdam was leaving close to 1pm, we wanted to make sure we used our time well, so we set out to find some of these murals. They're not all in one place, so we couldn't walk around to find them all, but we did at least see the Tintin one and a couple of others that are unknown to me but that were fun to see.
As we were looking around for the walls, we eventually came across the Mannekin Pis, the fountain with the peeing kid statue. It's smaller than you would think but as ridiculous as you might imagine. We hadn't really intended to see it on purpose since neither of us were interested, but as we happened upon it anyway, we decided to snap a photo. The building across the street from it was much more interesting, in my opinion. It had beautiful, colourful windows. As we continued to walk around, we ended up back at the Grand-Place by accident but got a couple more photos there as we were early enough that there were hardly any people out yet. And we also came across by chance this shopping arcade with all kinds of chocolate stores and other types of stores in them. It looked really pretty, architecturally, from the inside. The only disappointment with the visit for me was that I was unable to get any lace souvenir. Apparently the region has done lacework for centuries, and as I love lace, I would have loved to get a lace tablecloth or something like that from there, for my tea parties, but I could only find one store that sold it, and it was closed, so I couldn't do anything about that.
We only spent one night in Brussels, so we tried to make the most of it. Something I'm sure I'll remember is that due to the number of waffle and chocolate shops, I constantly smelled sweet air, as if the air were filled with cookies baking in the oven. But this was contrasted by a strong smell of urine, especially near bus stops and the train station. I'd like to remember only the sweet air, if I can! I end with various street photos of flowers and buildings.
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