Europe Spring Break Trip – Belgium

The first stop on our Europe spring break trip was in Belgium.  We visited Brussels and Bruges over the a 3 day period.

Where we stayed in Brussels

We stayed at the Novotel Brussels Centre Tour Noire. We had a great room with Wi-Fi and breakfast included. My kids ate their weight in mini croissants and bacon each morning. The room was perfect for just a few days. It had a small fridge and kettle.  The main bed was comfortable and the kids had a twin trundle bed that also doubled as a sofa.  The hotel was a 2 minute walk to a metro/bus station.  It was also very close to the Saint Catherine Cathedral, which was beautiful and in the middle of a pedestrian square that was ringed by restaurants.  We arrived at the hotel early and they let us in our room at 10am, and had welcome packs for the kids.

How we got around Brussels

Picnic near the Grand Palace in Brussels

We purchased 3 day unlimited tourist public transport tickets that were good on the trams, metro, and bus. We didn’t get near the value out of them that we thought we would. We maybe only took 2-3 transport rides a day. This was due to the fact that our hotel was only a 10 minute walk from most of the major sites. If we did it again, we would just pay per trip.

What we did in Brussels

We explored the Grand Palace area on our first afternoon. While near the Grand Palace, we went to the Chocolate Story Museum. We had a great time watching pralines be made and tasting the end product. The boys declared this the best museum ever. After leaving the Chocolate Museum, we had to go see the iconic Manneken Pis statue, or statuette due to its diminutive size.  The boys thought a peeing statue was a bit rude and couldn’t believe that it was out in public where people could see it.

Dinosaurs at the Museum of Natural Sciences in Brussels

The next day we visited the Museum of Natural Sciences. To get there, we walked past the EU buildings. The boys enjoyed seeing the EU guards with the guns by the entrance. We went to the Museum of Natural sciences mainly because they have a large hall that is completely dedicated to dinosaurs. It is the largest hall completely dedicated to dinosaurs in the world. We spent about an hour in the dinosaur hall. Most of the exhibits were in French, English, and German. This was true for all the text as well as the audio. I was really happy to see so much English in the exhibits as it made it so much more accessible to us.  My high school French didn’t include many paleontology words. We spent another 90 minutes going through the rest of the museum. Overall the kids really enjoyed it and so did we.

Aviation Hall

After lunch, we walked to Cinquantenaire Park to visit the Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and Military History. This museum is free, has a huge aviation hall with tons of WWI and WWII era planes. If you go during winter as we did, the Hall isn’t heated so keep your jackets with you. They also had exhibits of uniforms, armor, and weapons from many countries and eras. We spent a couple of hours exploring this museum. There was a special exhibit on WWI that I was eager to see. However, there was a fee to get into this exhibit and since I was the only one in the family who would have really enjoyed it, we ended up skipping it.

Where we ate in Brussels

For lunch on the first day, we went grocery store and bought picnic stuff. We got cheese, sausage, crackers, hummus, grapes, and drinks. We made our way to the Grand Palace area and proceeded to have a great picnic. We ended up in a touristy place for dinner that night that wasn’t very good. From here on out, we used Yelp to help us pick where we were going to eat and ate a lot better. The next day, we went to Maison Antonie, a famous place to get frites or french fries. They serve other things so we got 2 orders of frites a burger and some nuggets and drinks.   We sat on a park bench in the open square eating and watching pigeons fly about and try to eat leftover frites.

For dinner, we ended up at Café Arcadi on the recommendation of a nice man we met while walking around. No one spoke English and it felt off the beaten path even though it was 5-10 minutes away from the Grand Palace. We had a great dinner of roast chicken and potatoes for the kids and 2 pasta dishes for the adults. The adult dishes were so large we could have shared one. On our walk back to the hotel we stopped for waffles. We ordered them with powdered sugar, Nutella and vanilla ice cream, and a Nutella and Banana. It was a great ending to the day.

1 day in Bruges

On a canal in Bruges

When we were planning this trip, we had asked friends and family for a list of must see places that we should go while in Brussels. Several people suggested Bruges and implored us to go there. So one of our days in Brussels, we decided to take their advice. We went to the train station and booked tickets there and back for $32 total (kids were free). When we got there, we walked around the city and explored. We went over to the Belfry and checked it out, neither kid wanted to climb to the top so we skipped the line with pleasure. Then we booked an open air cruise around the city through the canals. The guide insisted on drawing out the word Bruges, holding on the g sound for an extra few seconds. Even now when we joke, we pronounce Bruges just like he did. Everyone enjoyed seeing the city and loved getting an up close view of the swans on the canals. After that we found a small Italian restaurant for lunch off the main square. The kids split a pizza and Keith and I split a shrimp pasta dish.

On our plane trip from NY to Brussels, Patrick and I sat next to a lovely lady who was from Bruges. She was so nice to Patrick and very charming. She advised us not to miss the chocolate from the Chocolate Line Shop. She told us they were one of the only shops in Bruges where the chocolate was actually made there. So we visited and made a purchase of Chocolate Line pralines. We also went to Dumon Chocolate. We sampled their famous hot chocolate. They serve you a glass of steaming milk with a piece of chocolate on a spoon. You then get to mix this chocolate in the milk until you have a delicious glass of hot chocolate. We tried 2 different types of hot chocolate and we all liked them. It was a welcome break from walking around the city and getting warm. After that it was getting a bit late so we headed back to the train station for the 1 hour trip back to Brussels.