Last Weekend in Belgium

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Ok, it's 3 AM on Sunday morning and I am having a hard time remembering what we did on Friday!

Since we had bought a 72 hour pass good for many attractions in Brussels, we sort of felt obliged to use it to get a good value for the purchase. Because it was open earlier than other museums, we started out at the musical instrument museum, located on a great art nuveau building. we are not musial instrument buffs, but the museum was a lot of fun for both of us. At the entrance, you are given headphones, and as you pass many of the instruments on display, you hear the insturment being played. Pretty ingenious! Next stop was the art museum actross the street, which we breezed through pretty perfunctorily.

We spent the afternoon following the walking tour outlined in our Lonely Planet book of Art Nuveau architecture, whcih was nice...it got us to different neighborhoods away from most tourists and sore fet by the end of the afternoon.

If it's Saturday, it must be a Belgian daytrip. Off we went to the nearby city of Leuven (po. 90,000), home to a large university and to InBev, the largest beer maker in the world - it recently bought Anheuser Busch. The weather was perfect...mid 70's, blue sky. We did have a small monky wrench thrown into our plans when we discovered that we were on the srong train. Instead of heading to Leuven, we were off to New Leuven, in the same general dirction, but definitely a different place. The "New" came on the map in the 1970's when the university in Leuven split into two parts, the original Flemish speaking staying in Leuven, and the French speaking moving to the "New". The two are located about 20 miles apart. Luckily the errant train ride cost us only about an hour's time.

We both very much liked Leuven. Specific sights were thin...although there was some georgeous architecture, but the overall ambiance was great. Loads of people were out in the many shopping streets, and the center of Leuven has an amazing number of restaurants and outdoor cafes for a place its size. We had a leisurely lunch out on the main square, and poked around for a while before heading back to Brussels (on the correct train.)

Tomorrow (really today since it is now almost 4 AM is the last full day of our vaction. We are looking forward to going home by now, even though the vacation has been a lot of fun. Going back to work is a different story.

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Comments

[Ron Higman]

Brugges and Beyond
I have followed and enjoyed your Blog very much. I commented on one of your early blogs that my wife and I are taking a short trip to Brugge, 3 nights, in mid-July. We will probably take the train to Ostende for a seafood dinner and an evening walk, and we will probably do a one day trip by train to somewhere such as Gent or Antwerp. If you could visit only one place other than Brugge on a one day trip, where would it be and why? Your feedback will be greatly appreciated. Ron

[HowardB]

Daytrip from Brugge - Response to comment
If you are up for a bike ride, I would suggest that. It's nice to get out into the countryside as a change of pace from urban life. The ride up the canal from Brugge to Damme, then to Sluis and out to the coast was a lot of fun. Damme is small but has some nice architecture, Sluis is small but lively, and probably the best thing about the coast was just getting there. If not a bike ride, I would pick Ghent as a daytrip destination. The trip takes only 25 minutes. Ghent has a nice old urban center, but is more lively than Brugge.