Wednesday 17 October 2007

How very Belgique!

The flight to Brussels lasted less than 60 minutes and we just couldn't get over that. We spent more time in Hamburg airport! It's still a bit of a shock to be in another country after such a short travel time. And once we arrived at our hotel (which was a bit out of town) we felt like we were back to something we knew about - all things French! Matt was delighted. I think it was more to do with French pastries.

Our hotel was about 20 minutes out of the centre of Brussels but it was worth it. The room was much much better than a dodgy digs in Hamburg and the hotel backed onto a park; a very beautiful park. As the seasons are changing the leaves were falling and were a mixture of oranges and greens. It really was relaxing sitting and watching people walking through the park with their dogs. Better them walking in the freezing than us! Ha! But no, it was pretty.


We only had two nights and we arrived pretty late-ish from our flight so we really only had a full day to explore the city and we knew what we wanted to do - visit the Grand Place, drink Belgian beer, eat Belgian chocolate, and have a croque monsiour/madame for old times sake! And we managed to do all that *and* meet a nutter at an Irish bar (as you do!).

Grand Place was literally that - a big open plaza with a grand looking church and old buildings surrounding it. Little alley ways led off the plaza in all directions which reminded us a lot of France and it's alley ways. We went exploring and found lots and lots of chocolatiers, everywhere, man I was in heaven! And of course to go with the chocolatiers there were lots of pubs, Matt was in heaven! Sounds like the best place for the both of us!




After ticking everything off our list we decided to spend the evening in a tiny Irish pub we found and that's were we met our very own nutter. He just had to find the only empty seat at the bar which was next to me, didn't he? Some guy from Essex who had just got a new job, was having problems with his wife, had two kids and a bit of a drinking problem. We got to know him well, before we downed our drinks and made up an excuse to get out of there! And when we left the pub we realised that (a) it was dark and (b) we were starving. So we did what all good tourists do in this situation, we headed for the nearest Maccas! Ha!

We we had a fun time in Brussels and although we'd heard it was supposed to be a "boring city" we weren't bored. Although in saying that we didn't stay very long. I'm sure we'll go back, it's French enough for Matt but not too French for me. A nice compromise!

We then caught a train for another unplanned stop on our trip...Amsterdam.

Last stop in Germany...Hamburg

Well our Hamburg visit didn't get off to a good start. We arrived at our Pension to discover that the double room we'd booked was actually a twin share and when they said that there was a "private bathroom" they actually meant a shower at the foot of one of the beds. Literally just a shower (with sliding doors and a nice bit of mould, but no separate room). So anyway we decided it wasn't for us and cancelled the booking and found something else. It was a bit on the dodgy side but at least there was a separate room for the shower! We had to laugh though.

So we did a tour bus trip of the town, which is quite pretty when you get to the outskirts - lots of trees and greenery - reminded us a bit of Vienna actually as there were lots of grand homes painted yellow and white.



The cool thing they did have in the centre of town was a man-made lake. On the one day when it was sunny it was beautiful sitting on the side of the lake sipping our hot chocolates and eating our kartoffelsuppe...hmmm! Even though it was sunny it was still freezing though. Winter is definitely coming...I even had to go out and buy a coat, scarf, and some gloves...eek! And they're shopping district was quite impressive. Two pedestrian strips of shops as well as lots of galleries and passages all with boutique style shops and cosy cafes.


Matt's favourite stop in Hamburg was a place called Saturn - a four story electronics and multimedia shopping centre, apparently the largest in the world. Actually that was something we noticed in our travels around Germany, they've got a claim to fame for something..."insert German town here" has the world's largest, longest, fastest, tallest, oldest, prettiest "insert random object here". It was funny when we started noticing it on every tour we went on! But needless to say we spent a lot of time in Saturn and Matt was very close to buying a laptop, if only it wasn't for the German QWERZ keyboard...

So we probably stayed one night too long in Hamburg and unfortunately for us our hotel was in a seedy part of town. But the tour that we did and the shops that we found made it worth the stop. And the delish cake that we discovered called Marmurkuchen - chocolate and vanilla marble cake covered in chocolate icing...oh yeah!

Our next stop was a bit of a detour from our original itinerary - Brussels, only a 60 min plane ride away...