Brussels/Ghent/Antwerp

Sarah and her shoes...

 This is going to be a weird post because Brussels, Ghent, and Antwerp are very very different places, but here goes.

The famous Manneken Pis in Brussels

Because we skipped out on the rest of our stay in Strasbourg, we decided to head over to Brussels to see what was up.

Ghent

Brussels was pretty sweet, better than what I expected. Of course it has all the government stuff so its very businessy, but it was a fairly attractive city for the most part. We walked around a bit and went to this palace ruins that are beneath a palace that's standing right now. After poking around for a bit we basically spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying the sunshine in a very nice park.

The chocolate in Ghent is way better than the chocolate in Brussels...

Since it was our first full day in Belgium, naturally we went into a chocolate shop... and bought some absolutely amazing chocolate and proceeded to eat it right away. So amazing.

Brussels

Its a good thing we have almost a week in Belgium, because I am going to fully appreciate the access to good things like Belgian waffles, fries, chocolate, etc. For only having one day in Brussels, I'm pretty sure I like Belgium already!

Ghent

The next day we went to Ghent on our way to Bruges. Its a small medieval town that's really cute! Little Flemish towns are very quaint and distinctive. Its one of those styles you can pinpoint easily, and we like it so much! I feel like Europe is full of places like this that not many people know about or can't be bothered going to, and I want to find more of them. They are so fun to walk around in!

She's super pumped!

Sarah was really excited because there is a for real medieval castle here, and it was really cool. We made that our destination, but it took us a long time to get there because we walked down the main shopping street and July sales were on... we got pretty distracted. After we released some endorphins, we wandered down some quaint streets and took a lot of photos.

Ghent

Before we went to the castle, we stopped in to this little chocolate store just off main street to get our daily allowance of four specialty chocolates. Choosing which ones is one of the biggest daily decisions that we make. I was off looking at some cutely wrapped bars of chocolate and I just got whatever Sarah got, and let me tell you, those were hands down the best chocolates I've ever had! After our castle visit we went back to the store and bought some for gifts. I love finding adorable little one of a kind stores like that where the chocolate is made by the father in law and husband and the wife runs the store... that's when you know its the real deal.

Brussels

Moving on from the chocolate rant... we visited the castle which was very much of a heavy stone, knight in shining armour, torture room, and dungeon kind of castle. They did in fact have an exhibit of torture devices and methods that were mind blowing. I'm not sure who came up with these ideas but they would have to have been very messed up people. We climbed a lot of very narrow spiral stairs there, and I'm not sure how they used to climb those in complete darkness with just their torch or candle for light, especially if they had consumed a large quantity of ale (well I guess here it would be Belgian beer, but I always think of knights and stuff drinking ale). It was pretty scary doing those stairs with electricity, although carrying a lot of shopping bags may have increased the difficulty level.
Before getting on our train, we had a light afternoon snack/dinner of croque monsieurs, which I learned about in my french class in school, and I've been wanting to try one so bad. Basically its a more elaborate grilled cheese sandwich, but I really liked it and I will make them at home.

Antwerp's main attraction

Antwerp is a little bit like Brussels, but there's not a whole lot going on there. It's a port city, and there's some cool things there, but they are spread out pretty far, and we only had a couple hours there. The number one thing to see in Antwerp is their train station, and it is a very very nice train station. Definitely the most beautiful I've seen, and its supposed to be one of the most beautiful in Europe. Other than that, there's not a whole lot to mention except that we had some delicious lasagna and went shopping, which seems to be a thing we do when we take day trips to Belgium cities.