Bruges Chocolate Festival!

When trying to find a place to travel to for Easter weekend, my friend Beth found some information about a chocolate festival in Belgium, so we decided it would be the perfect time to travel north and visit Belgium and the Netherlands! The chocolate festival was held in Bruges (also spelled Brugge, and Bruge…I’m not sure which one is the English version!). Bruges is a really cute city, called the “Venice of the North” because of all of its canals that run throughout the city. It is the biggest tourist destination in Belgium, and in fact I have heard that in the summer the population in Bruges is 2/3 tourists and 1/3 residents. I’m not sure if this is true but I wouldn’t doubt it! I was very surprised at all of the languages I heard in Bruges amongst the locals. Their official language is Flemish, but I heard a great deal of French, German, English and Dutch as well, and many of them could speak at least two or three languages. There is a very charming atmosphere in Bruges. The town square is lined with cafes, restaurants and chocolate shops. There are also two competing “frites” stands in the town square. Each stand offers a variety of different sauces for the famous Belgian french fries. We all decided we had to try them and I topped mine with mayonnaise because it seemed to be a popular choice amongst the crowd. I have to admit I wasn’t too impressed- the fries tasted pretty much like regular fries and the mayonnaise was a bit strange. Nevertheless, I’m glad I tried it, but I was hoping that Belgium’s reputation for chocolate and waffles was a bit more up to par!
We left our hostel early the next day to be first in line for the chocolate festival. We purchased the chocolate festival entry pass, which included entrance to two exhibitions with free samples as well as a movie voucher to view “Chocolat.” I had imagined the chocolate festival to be a huge festival with events throughout the town but it ended up being in only those two buildings. I had to understand though, since the weather in northern Europe is so unpredictable, and I wouldn’t want the chocolate statues to get ruined in the rain! The number of chocolate exhibits inside the expo was really impressive. We walked from station to station; some would include watching how chocolate was made, some were trying out new chocolate products that we got to sample and some just handed us free samples (such as the Lindt stand…mmm). It was definitely chocolate overload but I wasn’t complaining!
After the first expo we went on a canal tour of Bruges. I was so glad we did this because we were able to see parts of Bruges that you couldn’t see from the street, plus it was a picture perfect day so it was really nice being on the water. Bruges also has a “Windmill Park” that we visited that is five windmills in a line on the top of a hill. I think the windmills were locked or something because they weren’t spinning but it was still really cool to see. Later that afternoon we walked over to the other expo, which included a big Milka chocolate exhibit as well as cacao from over the world exhibits, so we sampled cacao from places like Ghana and Venezuala…it was very strong and some were quite bitter but it was a really cool exhibit. We then took a shuttle bus a bit outside the city to a really nice movie theater to watch Chocolat. I had never seen the movie before so it was nice to be able to see it during a weekend that was so focused on chocolate!
That evening we met up with our friend Lindsay who was in Bruges with her sister at their hostel because there was a live band playing there that night. It was pretty cool that there was a live band playing but Lindsay said that their room was right above it, so there was no way they would be able to sleep until they were done playing! The bar in the hostel was serving flavored beer, another one of Belgium’s specialties, so I tried a raspberry one and it was actually really good! There was also a free concert going on outside in the town square so we stopped by there as well and then headed back to our hostel as we were waking up early to head to Brussels the next day.
The train ride from Bruges to Brussels was only about 45 minutes (Belgium is such a small country). Later that evening we were taking a bus to Amsterdam, so we had the whole day in Brussels. The first thing we did was find the town square, which consisted of some beautiful museums and government offices, as well as Belgian waffles. We had already tried the fries, beer and chocolate so the next logical thing to do was try the waffles! The waffles were very impressive- a bit different than I would have imagined but definitely satisfying. We then walked towards the European Union headquarters. It was cool to see all of the flags of the EU countries lined up, and the building was very modern looking. Behind the building was a little park with a pond and a track, so we walked around the park and then laid out in the sun for a bit- all of that chocolate and walking around the past few days had been exhausting! We had to leave relatively early to go to the bus station to catch our bus to Amsterdam, so we weren’t able to see the famous “Mannequin Pis” or the statue of a giant atom, but it was nice to spend the day in Brussels. The bus to Amsterdam was a bit delayed but the bus was nice enough and we arrived there in pretty good timing. We checked into our hostel in Amsterdam and went to sleep right away so we could have a full day the next day before heading back to Paris.

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