September Weekend

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This weekend there was a huge beer festival held in the Grand Place. There were 44 Belgian breweries participating in this event and you can try more than 270 Belgian beers. On Saturday afternoon I went with a few friends to the beer festival. First, you have to buy bottle caps for one euro each and then you use these at the tents to purchase your beer. I tried a Blanche de Namur (white beer similar to Hoegaarden) and a Lindemans Pecheresse (a peach beer). They were both quite good. The beer festival was really busy though and there were some random musicians playing in the middle of all the people. Surprisingly enough, they served all the beers in glasses and during the 3 hours I was at the festival, I heard only 2 glasses drop! - pretty impressive if you ask me! On the perimeter of the Grand Place there were some vendours selling bottles of beer and there was also a beer demonstration informing you how to pour and choose your beers. It was a lot of fun...and I actually ended up with a beer glass of my own...but that's a story for another time!

On Sunday I decided to explore a bit on my own and I went to Grand Sablon, which is a really nice square with a beautiful church and a lots of shops, and on Sunday it has a huge antique market. I browsed around the antique market for a bit and bought some old Belgian postcards from the 1920s. After the market I went to the famous Belgian chocolatier shop, Pierre Marcolini. The store was beautiful and when you're inside, you don't realize it's a chocolate shop because it looks like a fine jewelry store. I tried some of their chocolates and they were out of this world! Soooo delicious! The store was in "chocolate square" (people call it that because there are about 6 different chocolate shops there). I walked around the area some more and saw the Conservatory of Music, the garden of Sablon, the Palais du Justice, and found a cute little cafe called "La Flute Enchantee." The Grand Sablon is in the upper part of the city, so on my way to the tram stop, I passed the lookout point down onto the lower part of the city.

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Photos

Belgian Beer Festival
Magali and I

Pierre Marcolini Chocolatier
Inside the store

Pierre Marcolini Chocolatier
Chocolates!