Belgium

The rail trip to Brussels was quite uneventful but on arrival, the “short walk” to the hotel turned out to be almost one kilometre with cases in tow. The directions given at the station were most confusing so we had to resort to the Satnav to find our way. The hotel was very plush and definitely upmarket but surprisingly the rooms were very small. Being an older hotel it was probably not designed for king size beds so it left little room to move around. It was very hot inside the hotel and the air-conditioning in our room did not seem to be working. We inquired at reception and were told they did not switch the air-conditioning on until July.

 

The lounge bar (above) and dining room were very plush and the service and meals excellent.

Our first day we wandered around the old part of the city and had a coffee in Grande Place with its magnificent old buildings. See below.

 

Our second day we boarded a coach for a day trip to Gent and Bruges, two medieval towns in the Flanders part of Belgium. We learned quite a bit about the history of Belgium and its various rulers over the centuries. Unfortunately we had fine drizzle in the afternoon so we ended up a bit damp. Can’t complain as we haven’t experienced much rain so far but the temperatures are dropping the further north we travel. Some photos of Gent and Bruges below.

The Halles Tower or Belfry at Bruges has a lean of about 1 metre as you can see from the photo below.

Of the 7 rail journeys that we are undertaking, only 2 required pre booking. When we arrived in Brussels we tried to book our journey on to Amsterdam for the 14^th only to discover that all trains to Amsterdam that day were fully booked requiring some alterations to our plans. We could not stay an extra night as hotels had been booked so we did a slight detour and travelled from Brussels to Rotterdam and then Rotterdam to Amsterdam which only added about an hour to the journey.