Bruxelles, Anvers, Bruges (Brussels, Antwerp, Brugge)

So I just got back from a long weekend in Belgium, and I thought I'd write this before I forget everything. I left Saturday morning from Paris at 725am with Sandra, Li Jun, and Robin and, after a small metro mix-up in Brussels, we arrived at our hostel around 1015am to discover that it was beautiful, complete with a balcony, leather couch and television, and full kitchen (at 30E a night). This was not necessarily a good thing, because we were so exausted and so comfortable in the room that it was hard to leave.

But we went out and explored a bit of Brussels. The metro is fantastic there, because they never check your ticket, so you just buy one and never stamp it and you can ride the metro indefinitely. We walked around the downtown area a bit and bought some waffles and went to the music museum, which was definitely the best museum I've been to so far. You walk around with magical headphones and when you stand in front of an exhibit of musical instruments, you can hear them being played. The building was beautiful on the outside and magnificently laid out on the inside. Sadly, my camera battery died, so if you look at the pictures of Belgium, they stop there.

Saturday night we went to what we thought was Delirium, a famous pub that boasts more than 300 different beers on tap. We were, however, disappointed at the seemingly small size and boring crowd. It turns out that there is more than one Delirium in Brussels, and we had gone to the small pub version. Li Jun and I wandered around Sunday night and accidentally discovered the real Delirium tap room, which was packed with people and did indeed have an absurd amount of beer on tap. Across the street was an absinthe bar (about 100 different types of absinthe) which was part of the same company, so we went there and tried a couple types of absinthe too. If you didn't already know, absinthe doesn't really do anything different from normal hard liquor except make your throat feel really really really warm.

Sunday during the day we went to Anvers, which didn't have anything particularly notable, except that every building was really beautiful in a middle age-y kind of way. We went to the printing museum there and saw some illuminated manuscripts from the middle ages and 2 of the oldest printing presses in the world.

This morning we took a train to Bruges, which is famous for it's middle ages architecture and beautiful canals. Bruges also hosts a chocolate museum, which was inevitably disappointing. I say inevitable because I was expecting greatness, but it was basically a giant advertisement for one of the biggest Belgian chocolate companies, Belcolade. And the history of chocolate is really depressing (i.e. a large aspect was the slave trade-- when cocoa beans were used as currency, people were traded for beans, then were used to harvest beans that would then be traded for people...)

Aside from that disappointment, it was a very fun weekend filled with waffles, fries, chocolate, and the biggest meringue i've ever seen, and eaten.

Also, this is what Flemish is like: Uw biljet is alleen geldig in de trein waarvoor u heeft gereserveerd (This ticket is only valid in the train where you have a reservation).