I left Thursday morning as we had it off for Ascension Day. In my research on Bruges, Ghent, and Brussels I discovered that in Bruges there is a basilica called the Heilig-Bloedbasiliek (or Basilica of the Holy Blood) which has a phial that supposedly contains a few drops of Jesus Christ's blood. Every year they hold this huge parade with the Holy Blood as the centerpiece and it just so happens that this parade is on Ascension Day. That decided my trip for me. I went directly to Bruges the first day to see the parade. To be honest I was very pleasantly surprised. I am pretty certain that most of the town participates in the parade where different stories from the Bible are acted out. There were hundreds of people in the parade. My favorite part was the attention to detail from the painful but authentic sandals to the real baby as baby Jesus to all of the live animals. There were camels, donkeys, chickens, a flock of sheep, falcons, and more. Amazing. It was like a parade, play, petting zoo, concert, and church sermon all in one! It lasted about an hour and I was glad I had spent the time waiting farther down the route so I had a good view of it.
After that I explored the beautiful city that is Bruges. I think it might actually be my favorite city now. It has the picturesque canals, great medieval architecture, and chocolate on every corner (not to mention the Belgian waffle stands). Plus there was a carnival going on there too so I checked all of that out. That first day I tried lots of chocolates and traditional cookies. (I'll summarize all of my chocolate discoveries at the end.)
The next morning I got up early and managed to leave the hotel on schedule and thankfully so. (Oh and I love that at breakfast in Belgium you actually get fresh Belgian waffles. Heaven!) I went to the Belfry first (the big tower in the city center) and since only 70 people are allowed up there at a time I had to wait about 15 minutes. But by the time I came down the line was out the door. Anyway it is a really tight, spiral staircase all the way up, so much so that I might have had a little claustrophobic freak-out moment on the way up. But I worked through it and made it up the 366 steps for the great view.
Then I headed to the Choco-Story museum. I learned a bit about the chocolate production process and a lot about the history of chocolate consumption. Then we watched a little demonstration on how they make pralines (and of course got a sample). Oh and in the chocolate art area they had a life-sized chocolate Barack Obama (and there were only about 6 pieces of chocolate art and none of the others were of people, just Obama).
Before heading onto Ghent I went to the Halve Maan Brewery tour. It was fun and there were even good views of the city involved. Plus at the end you get a free beer. No complaints.
Then the 20 minute train ride to Ghent, where I tried to plan my time in Ghent. Unfortunately I was so tired at this point (and maybe at a sugar low) that I couldn't find the motivation to really seek out everything there. It was surprisingly beautiful (again, what a difference a canal makes) and since I didn't see most of it now I have an excuse to go back to Belgium.
Then on to Brussels for my last 2 days. Word of warning here: have a map of Brussels with you before arriving at the train station, because you can't find a city map in the Central station. This especially becomes a problem when you only have your hotel address and the memory of the sentence "near the central train station." Luck was one my side though and the 3rd building of the first street I tried was my hotel! Then the concierge who checked me in offered to take me around the city the next day after he got off work in the morning at 11. It was a nice offer, but as soon as he mentioned going to Salsa too, I figured this was not the best idea. Needless to say I had to sneak out of the hotel the next morning so that I didn't have to tell him I didn't want a personal tour by a stranger who knew where I was sleeping that night.
I confess, in Brussels I did one of those hop-on, hop-off bus tours. I know, I know; but there were lots of things to see and some were outside the city center, plus it gets boring walking around all day alone, so this way I got someone to tell me all about the city. I wont list all the sites, that's for you to see when you go visit.
I did seek out the Manneken-Pis fountain and was a bit disappointed because his outfit that day was just a straw hat. Plus the fountain was much smaller than I had imagined. In fact most of the chocolate replicas around the city were larger than the real thing.
Oh I almost forgot, Saturday was Gay Pride Day in Brussels and they had their huge parade that day too. It was just like San Francisco's, except slightly more mellow (but not much). The hardest part is trying to cross the parade route and not get covered in confetti.
I had a late lunch/early dinner so as not to have to sit alone surrounded by groups of people staring at the girl eating alone. I had the mussels and they were wonderful. Another tick in my list of must-do.
The highlight of the last day was a chocolate demonstration at La Maison des Maitres Chocolatiers. If you are ever in Brussels you MUST do this. It is sort of a chocolate co-op in the Grand Place and everyday at 4 they offer the workshop/demonstration. There were only 3 of us and we went up into this workshop room and he talked all about history (which only slightly involved chocolate) and kept quizzing us on all of these historic events. Regardless it was very interesting and he was very friendly. Then we made some pralines. The best part is once it is over you go back downstairs and get a hot chocolate and samples of some pralines. The price for the whole thing was something like 8.50 euros and it lasted over an hour, we got a 5 euro hot chocolate, and probably another 3 euro worth of praline samples. Best deal of the trip. Oh and the best praline there was the rosemary-orange praline.
So now for the chocolate experience. I had all sorts of different chocolates from about 10 different shops. I easily ate 10 pralines/chocolates each day, in addition to the frites, waffles, and cookies. I tried every interesting praline I could find including banana, mint, coffee, tiramisu, lime-chili, peanut, creme brulee, rosemary-hazelnut, and more. My favorite places were Depla, Chocolate Line, and Laurent Gerbaud.
Definitely one of the top 3 trips of the past 14 months!
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