Belgium - part 1

(My trip report for Belgium has quickly grown out of control, so I'm going to split it up into several posts. Stay tuned for more. There's a selection of photos up on Flickr. You can also click on any of the photos here to see a larger version.)

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I’m not sure where the idea for a trip to Belgium came from. Christine was going to be working in London and we decided it would be cool to have me meet her somewhere in Europe and spend Christmas there. We must have drinking beer, because a beer tour through Belgium came up and a trip was born.

Brussels
My flight arrived early morning in Brussels and Christine met me there after taking a train from London the night before. We didn’t have much of an itinerary before we left; partly due to laziness and partly because we were both busy leading up to the trip. Part of our first day including sitting at a bar (Delirium) in downtown Brussels with a map and some guide books and plotting a general course. We had a list of some things we wanted to see, so it was mostly a matter of figuring out an order.

Planning a route at the bar

We didn’t waste any time getting a brewery visit under our belt. Our first stop after hitting downtown Brussels was the Cantillon Brewery. Cantillon specializes in traditional lambic beers. Lambic differs from other beers in that its yeast source is the open air. (Typical brewing involves using a specific strain of yeast, and “wild” yeast is considered evil.) Sometimes you’ll drink straight lambic, but more frequently it’s used to make a fruit lambic (like kriek, which is made from cherries) or gueuze. Gueuze is a blend of old and young lambic. It’s an interesting experience, and I love the taste. It’s a little on the bitter side, but still retains some slight citrus taste.

Cantillon Bottles

The other “foods"
In addition to beer, Belgium is known for some other foods. Notably frites (fries), waffles, chocolate, and mussels and we intended to take in each of them. Our first dinner was at Le Pré Salé for some moules-frites (mussels and fries). Very good mussels. Loved it. We also had fries earlier in the day from Fritland (no joke), and they were damn tasty as well with some spicy sauce. And to cover the other food groups, we had a waffle with chocolate from a street vender.

Mmmm...waffles	Mussels

Hey bus driver…
The next morning we went to the airport to pick up our rental car: a gutless VW Polo. We were planning on taking a bus to the airport to get our car to save on the €20 cab fare. We made our way out to the bus, waited patiently, and then watched the bus (which was almost 10 minutes late) pass by without stopping. Maybe we were supposed to flag it down like a cab or something, but I thought the mere fact that we were standing next to the curb outside the bus stop shelter would be enough. Instead of wasting another precious half hour waiting for the next bus, we sucked it up and took a cab. It was annoying at the time, but it’s pretty funny to think back on this bus just blowing right by us.