Our plan was to cycle from Ghent to the capital of Belgium; Brussels. After a restless night of sleep due to the constant rain which showed no sign of letting up, we decided to bail and get a short train to Brussels. While grabbing a quick coffee at the campground cafe we met three other groups of cycle tourers all delaying the start to their day while complaining about the rain. It was an uneventful train trip (it's so easy to take your bike on a train in Europe!), but a rather colourful exit from the station as we found ourselves on one of Brussel's red light streets. Apparently chief navigator Dave had "no idea" this exit would lead us straight onto this street (sorry guys, no photos of this)!
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| Grote Markt |
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| Army hanging about the city centre |
Our first day in Brussels was constant, pouring rain so we decided to see if we could find a place to watch a movie. Luckily in Belgium most films are shown in their original version (English) with both Dutch and French subtitles. It was a nice touch of normality, even if the popcorn wasn't quite up to scratch!
The rain finally let up and we spent the next day walking around the city seeing the sights. This mostly consisted of finding different statues of various creatures weeing in public.
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| Manneken Pis |
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| Peeing dog |
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| Jeanneke Pis |
We headed out that evening for some traditional Belgian cuisine. This consisted of different kinds of meatballs and beef stew. Pretty tasty but I can see why their aren't Belgian restaurants spread over the world. Best to stick to the beer!
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| Atomium |
We thought we had finally left the rain behind us as we headed towards Antwerp on the way to Holland, however we were wrong and manged to get caught in a few more showers on the way.
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| Who knows what this shelter is for? |
We enjoyed our last evening in Belgium exploring with a beer down on the Antwerp waterfront. We were cycling along getting close to the Dutch border when it happened; The Big Crash! We were waiting at a controlled railway crossing for a train to pass through along with a big line of cars. The railway tracks were on a 45 degree angle to the road and while cycling over them one of us got our wheels caught and hit the ground with a big thud. I will give you all 30 seconds to guess which one of us this was more likely to have fallen on their face in front of a crowd of Belgians...
You guessed correctly- it was me! I felt lucky not to have broken any bones, but was rather disappointed that only Dave was around to show off my bruises to! I was a bit shaken up and pretty sore (everywhere!) so we got a train to our next campsite in Holland.
Overall our time in Belgium was pretty great and despite spending just over a week there I think we experienced a lot of what the country has to offer.
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| Belgian beer - check |
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| Belgian waffles - check |
And I even managed to collect a souvenir for the next few weeks (this was one of many bruises and I swear it looked worse in real life) -
- Sarah
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