Brussels and Amsterdam

Day 2 in Brussels wasn’t supposed to be a huge day – I wanted a bit of a sleep in, to do some laundry and have a bit of a wander and explore. 

The laundry was easy thanks to Professor Google, which directed me to the Wash Club a 10 minute walk away. Easy, and even if all the instructions were in French and Flemish, I managed okay. 

Next up was the exploring. I headed vaguely towards Grand Place, which sounded interesting, and wandered through a long shopping mall street to get there. As I got closer to Grand Place, the shops became less high street, more “traditional Belgian” places (beer, chocolate, waffles) and souvenirs. By the time I got to Grand Place I wasn’t really expecting much, but woah, this place is amazing! It apparently used to be the big marketplace before they had to kick it out to the burbs, so there’s streets around it called “Butter Street” etc. Fun! 

There are some fabulous chocolate shops around here (like this one, obviously named after my enduring love affair with chocolate) and I picked up a coupe of treats at one of the many Leonidas shops. 5 artisanal choccies for 2 euro? I thought there was some mistake!

Needing some sustenance, I stopped into a pub called The Purple Rose for another Belgian specialty, Moules Frites (mussels and chips). Close readers will remember I had this in Reims, but here the mussels are cooked much more simply, either au natural, with white wine, or with garlic. I chose the white wine, and accompanied the happily sozzled molluscs with some cherry beer. Tasty stuff!

I also walked around to one of the other venues for the summer festival, in case I wanted to head there for any of the later concerts. Conveniently near Central station, even during the day it was buzzing with people, vendors, and of course the bands doing sound checks for the evening’s gig.

Heading back to the hotel, I was having happy thoughts about another raspberry beer in the hotel bar, but when I got there, the keg was just finished (and spurted dregs all over the poor lady behind the bar). Sigh, no more raspberry for me! 

After my first afternoon nap of the holiday, I decided I needed to get out again, so I went to check out that night’s concert. First up was folk outfit Clare Louise, who sounded a bit like The Cranberries, and a bit Beth Orton. Next up was soul performer Axelle Red, who was really enjoyable too. 

I was up early the next morning to catch the Thalys to Amsterdam for the day. I slightly underestimated the time needed to catch the metro to Brussels Midi station, and so did an unseemly dash through the station to the platform, only to find that my train was delayed by 15 minutes, and I need not have rushed. Oh well, good to get the heart rate pumping!

The train journey was uneventful, although it was interesting to see the huge wind farms along the line. Obviously the birds here have more sense and don’t often fly into the propellors like people think they’ll do in Australia. 😀

It seemed like the entirety of Europe was in Amsterdam for the day! Hundreds of people were crammed into the tourist information centre, and luckily they were selling maps from a vending machine rather than having to join the queue snaking all around the shop. 

As I left the info office, it started raining. And raining. And raining. I was wearing my new raincoat, and had my trusty umbrella (which was a little worse for wear after being caught in a windy rainstorm yesterday one of the spokes broke, and there’s now a hole in it…) but things weren’t great, so I joined a group huddling in a doorway. Eventually it slowed to a manageable downpour, so I headed on. 

I was supposed to be meeting the walking tour at Spui Square, so stayed around the main area, browsing shops and popping in for an iced coffee and water at La Place, a gourmet food hall style restaurant attached to a department store.

Soon it was time to meet the group, and I found my way to Spui Square, where they have big book markets on the weekends. Not much here today, although there were a few bookshops surrounding it.

The previous group ended here, and I was amused to see E and L who I’d met on the Paris tour finishing their one there. They’d done a cycling tour, and so had even more fun with the rain than those of us walking! They were heading on, so we said our goodbyes and I met the new group. There were only three of us plus Sean the tour guide, so it was a nice small number. The other two were a pair of British ex-actors, so we had a lot of fun. 

Sean took us around to show us a lot of Dutch traditional food, like cheese (must eat it with mustard or a sauce of some kind to make it truly Dutch), frites in the paper cones (with sauce again), sausages, either in a bun or just naked in a paper bag (with sauce!) brined herring and eel (the eel was great, and the herring okay, but a bit squishy…) and then a tasting of a liqueur. The others tried the little miniature yeasted pancakes too, which were apparently amazing. 🙂

We also went around a supermarket, which was amusing, and Sean told us about how most Dutch cook. Not a lot, apparently, and most people have a small repertoire of dishes they cook over and over, without a lot of trying new things. Sandwiches are apparently big in the Netherlands – and the size of the cheese and meat department in the supermarket really attests to this!

After the liqueur, the tour was done, so the three of us relaxed with a cherry beer at the pub for a while, discussing the state of affairs. They’d been on a red light district tour, which I wasn’t terribly interested in, especially when they’d been told that apparently the way things were done in Amsterdam was the best in the world for prostitution, as the workers (almost exclusively women still) are paid a bit more, the police actually have the power to arrest people who are assaulting the prostitutes, and up to 50% of prostitutes actually choose the profession. That certainly says a lot about other places, where it’s less than half who are forced into it! 

Anyway, after this heated discussion, it was time to wander back to the train station. I picked up the obligatory Starbucks mug and siphoned off their wifi for a while, and then stocked up on cheese, water and chocolate at the convenience store in the station before catching my train back to Brussels. 

Unfortunately there was a delay in the line, so the train didn’t get back in time for me to catch any of Front 242‘s performance at the festival, so I staggered back to the hotel and hit the sack pretty quickly.