This weekend was a great opportunity to visit another country in Europe, but this time, via the Eurostar, a train connecting London to the rest of the train network in Europe. The Eurostar’s major stops are Waterloo in London, Paris in France and Brussels in Belgium, though you can catch connecting trains to other destinations, like to Bruge where I ended up for the weekend with Kath from Oxford.
I thoroughly recommend anyone living in London to catch the Eutostar to any of its destinations instead of flying as it is a much more pleasurable experience. If you pick you tickets up in advance, you only have to be there approximately half an hour in advance to get through passport control and be on the train. Since it departs from Waterloo found in zone 1 it should mean getting there is easier than any of the airports. The train ride is extremely smooth and the seats are much more comfortable and spacious than the equivalent economy ones you will find on any plane.
Although the Eurostar finishes at the end of Brussels, we caught a connecting train to Ooestende that stopped in Bruge in about an hour. The train station in Bruge is located on the southside of the city, and it wasn’t too long before we checked into our hotel.
Anyone who had been to Bruge before and I had spoken to said that the city was beautiful and even though the weather we experienced cycled from raining overcast skies to perfectly warm bright blue ones, we definitely saw the charm that this city had to offer. The city is interspersed with many canals and surrounded by one large circular one, meaning that you will find over 65 bridges and understand why it is called the Venice of the North. Buildings of all different styles since the 15th century line the traditional cobblestones road, yet all of the streets looked consistently clean, even with the number of tourists walking around. The city itself is easily walkable, with the medium sized winding paths opening up to larger squares with the major two being Markt and Burg.
I highly recommend that you take a canal tour, with a single trip costing 5.70 lasting around half an hour providing you with a great historical and local account of many of the buildings, bridges and areas. It is definitely a great way to enjoy the wondrous sights the city has to offer from a different perspective.
To me, the country of Belgium seems well known for its beer and chocolate, and so the entire weekend was decidedly unhealthy in trying to indulge in sampling both of these treats. Saying that the selection of the beers in Belgium is wide would be a grossly misunderstatement. A mostly well worn tourist spot, the bar Berge sells around 300 unique beers on its menu and you need a book to order. Most bars that served a wide selection of beers tended to group them first by brand, then colour, and then percentage of alcohol. Most beers available are commonly strong, with many of the speciality beers easily over 6% (up to around 12%). Bruge locals tend to drink slowly to last the night away and you rarely see anyone drinking pints since they understand that you can’t simply slam a lot of these drinks down, without expecting to go with them!
Chocolate shops adorn many of the streets, especially around the more touristy areas of Markt and Burg, though many locals seemed to frequent them as well. We visited these places at the somewhat apt time leading up to Easter meaning that most of the stores we focused on producing Easter eggs, rabbits and chickens as well as the normal faire of truffles and blocks. Buying good quality chocolate to take home is not difficult either, and with all the prices from most of the chocolatiers being pretty similar, I recommend you simply buy the things that you want. The choice is amazing, all of them offer consistently high quality melt in your mouth chocolate, delicious hand made truffles, and liqueur filled chocolates.
Food seems to be quite an important aspect to the city, with almost every one of our meals being extremely tasty and enjoyable. Den Dyver is one such place that specialises in both fine dining and seafood, and with the Chocolate Festival Bruge is holding until the end of May, combined all of these aspects into a magnificent menu dubbed the ‘Culinary Walk through Chocolate’. Our experience of this five course masterpiece, more accurately named a ‘Leisurely Stroll’, lasted almost three and half hours of culinary bliss and included:
- A four selection sampler of raw tuna and basil, cucumber sushi, a prawn and avocado salad, and a tiny bowl of celeriac soup, served with an aperitif;
- Smoked duck served with local endives and salsify slices;
- Grilled mullet with fennel mash and a white chocolate orange sauce;
- Bass Baked in cocoa butter served with ginger pasta, vegetables and a trappist sabayon; and finished with
- A wicked trio of small desserts of chocolate mousse and wine-vinegar soaked strawberries, a warm chocolate pudding and a fresh mint and chocolate heaping of ice cream.
This richly enjoyable and highly calorific experience did not necessarily come cheaply but was definitely worth the experience combining all the wonderful things on offer in this city.
On our last day, we even managed to spent a few hours in Brussels since we caught an earlier train and had to wait for our Eurostar back to Waterloo. The contrast I saw between the two cities was quite significant considering they belong to the same country and are only an hour separate from each other by train. Brussels, a predominantly French speaking city opposed to the Flemish one of Bruge, appeared much more ethnic as well as overly touristy. Dozens of tacky souvenir stores line the major roads and increase in density as you make your way to its more famous market squares. I found Brussels was significantly dirtier and definitely busier than the more laid back café-centred Bruge.
It was a fantastic weekend and we enjoyed every bit of it. See the photos here.
This weekend I visited the city of Alicante in Spain, something I had booked a while back when I had been sick and not realised that it was a long weekend. My flight was out of Luton, one of the more increasingly popular airports located out of Central London. For my first time flying out of Luton, the entire experience was quite easy though was a very early (4:30am) start to Saturday morning. First I had to get to Marble Arch (20 minute walk) so that I could catch a bus that dropped me off at the airport in about an hour, and that’s two hours before my 8am flight. It was a painless enough experience and by the time I got on the flight, an early-morning nap was well deserved. I found Luton busy for such an early time in the morning, and was further amused (or should I be more worried) by the number of people that were sitting in the bar and having a smoke and/or a beer.
After arriving in Alicante after a rather uneventful flight, a short forty five minute bus ride costing only €1 dropped me off directly in the city centre, right by the beach. Central Alicante is small and easily walkable with both a bus and train station connecting it to other major cities including Valencia and Madrid. The beach and harbour is an important aspect to this seaside town, and I definitely appreciated the closest one, Playa de Postiguet, for the entire weekend. It was great to be relaxing, soaking up some rays, though not as many as what some tourists looked like they had, and great to be walking around in sun with the very moderate temperature of 22°C for the entire weekend. 
There are plenty of things to keep you occupied in Alicante, with loads of shopping (though a little quieter this Easter weekend), lots of amazingly detailed buildings and plenty of cafes, restaurants and bars to bide your time. Near to where I was staying, the Plaza de Toros, or the local bull-fighting building was absolutely stunning but it would have been good to see one actually on. The port is worth walking around, if not just to see the stunning boats and indulge in the buzz of all the cafes filled with people eating tapas or just enjoying the sun. This applied the same to the main walkway by the water, Paseo Explanada de Espana that really lit up at night time.
The Spanish way of life was really interesting as the lunch kicks off really quite late starting to get busy around 1pm and going until 3pm or later. Stores close in the meantime and don’t really start happening again to really quite late (think 10pm or later). In between there is plenty of time for people to grab tapas, but things were only really starting to get active very late at night. The plazas fill with families and kids playing football (or soccer for those back home) whilst the bars, restaurants and clubs pump out music crowded with livelier and generally younger groups.
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