Runabout Robinsons: Tuesday 17 April - 2 cities in one day, neither of them Ghent

Lucky for us Belgium is a small country. We managed to head west to Brugge in the morning for a few hours, then East to Brussels in the evening. The main reason for heading to Brussels was a visit to the Neuhaus chocolate factory to taste as many kinds of chocolate as we could before closing; we had 20 minutes. But more about that later.

Brugge is a quaint, lovely old city with a stunning array of buildings. When you get to a city you can often have a tour, being pedaled around in a little cart. In Brugge you get shown around in a horse and cart. We happened
to find another Cavalier King Charles Spaniel who also doesn't like horses (like our two girls).

This photos is just for my girls' sake.

The first place we went looking for was Begijnhof. It's where women lived in a close community together and devoted their life to the church. We attacked it from one angle - the wrong one it seems. Ended up having to take stalker photos over the fence to work out if we were headed in the right direction. We weren't. So then we just went wandering around this beautiful medieval city admiring the architecture, looking for the main square and dropping in to places along the way.

My photos really don't do the city justice.

We visited the Church of Our Lady and Berg Square which were very pretty. It was a freezing cold day and wandering around was hard work so we thought we'd earned some Belgian fries - the best in the world we've been told. They were actually very good, though my friend Ann said those ones weren't the best; I would love to have tried some better!

On our way back to the train station we found the Begijnhof we were looking for, but only had 5 minutes to spend looking around.

There were some really pretty swans outside too.

We met Ann at home and battled the rush hour traffic to drive to Brussels to the Neuhaus chocolate factory shop. We tried as many of the chocolates as we could before our bellies protested. Neuhaus chocolate usually sells at 55Euro per kilogram (about NZ$100) but the seconds sell at 40Euro for 3kg. We bought 3kg and shared with Ann. While you may be thinking that this is an insane amount of money to spend on chocolate, you'd be right, but this chocolate is like nothing we have in NZ on the shelves at Pak n Save on special for $2.49! And no I will not be sharing.

We visited the Atomium, which is a giant structure of balls. For those scientists who read this, it is in the shape of the molecular structure of iron to represent the industrial strength of Belgium and was built for the World Expo of 1958. It kind of looks like and alien ship to me. The connecting rods are escalators leading from one ball to the next. You can eat at a restaurant here at night.

It's a cube with a ball in the middle. Tilt your head to the side and you'll be saying 'aaaaaaah'.

Ann and I

Here is a view of it at night from one of the good viewing spots.

Another example of the multicultural and multilingual nature of Europe was when we had tea at an Italian restaurant in Belgium, with the menu in French, where our Flemish speaking host ordered in French, and we in English. Only in Europe... It was the best Quattro Staggiorni pizza I've had outside Italy.

We walked around Brussels for a while and went to some excellent view points. Another late night. Home about 11.30-12.00.

Market plaza

This is not a miniature chair - it's very large pieces of chocolate!

Rubber duckies are everywhere! But not all are made of chocolate like these ones.

In Brussels there is a famous statue of a little boy peeing. Everyone has their own version (like in chocolate). The statue is actually tiny, about 50cm high.