Wednesday 15 October 2014

Brussels

On 10.10.10, I started 'officially' dating the most incredible person I have ever met. He is still my boyfriend four years later, and we have gone through so much in that time - finishing high school, getting into university & moving to London, getting through university and finally finishing university! Some major life changes right there, and I feel so lucky to have had him by my side for every moment of it. Now we are living together, and I couldn't be happier.
To celebrate our 4 year anniversary, we went to the land of chocolate, beer and chips - Belgium! We caught the 2 hour Eurostar and spent three days eating our way around the beautiful country and suffering regular sugar highs and lows together. We were staying in Martin's Brussels EU hotel which was really lovely and great value for money - comfortable beds, in the center and with a spa/gym (which we obviously didn't use)!

Brussels is beautiful, with amazing architecture, statues and gardens everywhere you look. 







We spent a lot of time trying to soak everything up by walking around aimlessly, and getting lost! 





Ok - as pretty as Brussels may be, there was one reason we had come and that was simply chocolate. Although I would say I am a pretty die hard chocolate fan, even I got sick of chocolate after three days in Belgium. I consumed SO MUCH chocolate from morning to night - warm, thick hot chocolates, delicately perfected pralines, slathered on waffles or speculoos biscuits, ganache macaroons. Brussels has a lot of chocolate shops - they are literally on every street, I saw far more of them than Starbucks or Mcdonalds which is saying something! 




Magical waffles from Maison Dandoy 



We bought 5 bags of speculoos-chocolates from Laurent Gerbaud 

Waffle stuffed with belgian chocolate & speculoos from The Waffle House 





Above - magical chocolates from Pierre Marcolini, renowned chocolatier - the best hot chocolate and macaroons ever. 

We also had in Bruges (coming in the next post) probably the best chocolate of the trip from a shop called The Chocolate Line - with bizarre concoctions like absinthe, iced coffee, maize and bacon chocolate we didn't expect it to be as mindblowingly incredible as it was. 

I was shocked at how international Brussels is, although I guess I shouldn't have been. Dima rejoiced as he found a kebab that was apparently better than those we ate growing up in Cyprus (after long nights out), so of course he ate three of them. He also indulged in the beer opportunities Brussel held, but as I hate beer I wasn't as impressed. 





I'm not sure if we just didn't find the right place, but the chips in Brussels were a little overrated (but chips are chips, and I don't discriminate) 


We also went to visit the Atomium, which was pretty impressive although very random. Great views though, and a bit of random atomic history along the way. 




And of course visited the famous statute of 'Mannekin Pis' - a little boy peeing who owns 365 outfits which are changed daily. We found these outfits in the museum we visited after.. I wish I had that many clothes!




Overall Brussels is a really lovely place to spend a weekend, but I think two days is just about the right amount of time to spend there. It is beautiful, but quite expensive and city-like, with quite random attractions - but great food! However, the town of Bruges (coming soon) is beautiful and I wish that we had had more time to spend there. 


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