A Quick Pit-stop on the Mainland: Belgium and Luxembourg

I'm aware that this blogpost will expose me as the travel nerds we are, but you probably already knew that to a certain extent, so I'm going for it.  So far I've blogged about  Scotland (the first leg of our trip),  Northern Ireland (the third leg of our trip), and  Ireland (the fourth and final leg),  but we had a pitstop in Belgium/Luxembourg between Scotland and Northern Ireland.  Why?  Because  Glen had never been to either one of them and we thought we'd take advantage while we were in the "vicinity".  Of course, the term vicinity is being used lightly here since they were a plane ride away, but relatively speaking we were much closer to Belgium/Luxembourg than we normally are and inter-Europe flights on RyanAir can be found for  cheap.  

So we went for it.  

It was a pretty quick trip, because we didn't want to short-change the British Isles, but we ended up really enjoying this fun little foray into mainland Europe for a few days.  In fact, if you ask Glen what his favorite part of the trip was, he'll likely tell you that he loved all the places we visited, but Belgium was his favorite.  And we both agree that it definitely had the best food and that's not even close!

We arrived into the Brussels Charleroi Airport (the small airport RyanAir flies into) and immediately jumped on a bus to Ghent.   We chose Ghent, because we had time for one city and it had been one of our favorite stops when I took the kids to Belgium in 2019. 

We figured since we were only spending 2 nights in Belgium, that we should get a hotel as centrally located as possible.   The Ghent Marriott (right where my finger is pointing ) is located right on the canal and was ideal for exploring the city! 

We were very excited to locate a Belgian waffle place nearby THAT HAD GLUTEN FREE WAFFLES TOO!   I  might have been a bit giddy about that and we definitely stopped there a couple times!  They even had gluten free speculoos topping for it that made me extra happy.

I was excited to introduce Glen to the Ghent "noses" that we discovered on our last trip here.   They're a locally made gummy candy that resemble a nose shape, hence the name.   

They're decently good (especially when fresh), but, frankly, I was more excited by other Belgian foodie finds.  We ate well on this leg of our trip!   

Since we only had a short time in Belgium, we debated about the most effective way to see the sites.  Ghent is a fairly compact city, but we'd walk by things, and think, "Wow, that's beautiful," then not really know anything else about it.  

What we ended up doing is buying a Scavenger Hunt off of Trip Adviser, which was a perfect way to see the city.  It took us to all the big sites (and some smaller ones), would give us information about them when we arrived, and even had games/challenges we could try.

I liked that we could go at our own speed, taking time to go inside those places that interested us.  We definitely saw a lot more of the city than we would have just by wandering. 

I was flooded with nostalgia when the scavenger hunt brought us to this alley filled with graffiti.   I had totally forgotten that this was in Ghent and we have several pictures of Ellie and Adam here from 2019.   I actually love when cities provide graffiti zones where local artists can showcase their talents. 

Between the food, the gorgeous architecture, and the walkability of Ghent, we were pretty enamored.   

We were a little reluctant to leave here after just two days, but it was time for one last adventure on the mainland before heading back to the Isles.  

Early the next morning, we packed up our luggage and hopped on a train for Luxembourg.  

It was about a 4-hour train ride, but the scenery between Ghent and Luxembourg City was stunning...especially the closer to Luxembourg we got.  It was hard to take pictures on a moving train, but here was one that actually turned out okay. 

  

We only had about 24 hours in Luxembourg City, so we logged A LOT of miles trying to see as much as humanly possible in that 24 hours.  

Luxembourg City was definitely the least touristy of the cities we visited, which meant finding postcards was harder than even usual.    It's like sending snail mail is a dying art or something. 😆 I never did find very pretty postcards there, but I laughed A LOT when we came across this one...

I've shopped for postcards in a lot of different places before and had never seen that kind of humor expressed on a postcard before.  The only thing I could figure was that at some point maybe some postcard manufacturer got Luxembourg mixed up with Luxor, Egypt and they just decided to go with it and make into a joke postcard.   My kids were VERY confused when they got theirs and originally thought they were delayed postcards from our trip to Egypt in 2023 (which I still haven't blogged about)!  

Food was also a bit of a disappointment in Luxembourg, but luckily we had been well-fed in Belgium, so it was all good. 
 
Luxembourg City is built into deep gorges formed by two rivers, which means that it's really a multi-level city.

We found a glass elevator that would take us between the upper and lower parts of the city without exhausting ourselves!   

This was taken at one of the biggest attractions in the city...Bock Casemates and the view from there was pretty spectacular. 

In fact, we found ourselves in awe of the amazing view quite a lot while walking around the city. 

And I'd say that at least 50% of the photos we took in Luxembourg were of gorgeous overlooks like this one...

We were also  excited to run into missionaries in the short time we were there.  They were out with friends doing a running club and asked us to take a few photos for them.   We hadn't even noticed there missionaries among them when they first approached us to take their photo, but they were so cute when we all realized.   I think their friends were as excited to meet Mormons "in the wild" as the missionaries were!  It certainly made our day, especially since the last time I'd been in Luxembourg was when I was 14 and we stopped to visit my cousin, Scott, who was serving his mission there in 1987, so it seemed only fitting to see missionaries here again, nearly 40 years later! 

We very much enjoyed our time in both Belgium and Luxembourg...

But before we knew it, it was time to head back to the British Isles....Luxembourg to Belfast, then Dublin, then home...

And now, the trip blogposts are done, and I'm back to real life!

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WORLD GEOGRAPHY 101: Belgium

So I told you the story about how our WORLD GEOGRAPHY course came to be in the last post.  It was a happy confluence of circumstances which has allowed us the greater ability to travel right now.  But have I ever told you how I got bit by the travel bug in the first place?  

It's two fold. 

First off, I was born into a family with a bit of a competitive nature.  Mostly the competitiveness is saved for board games and sports, but it's also extended into exploring the world. With 29 countries under my belt now, I still am one of the least well-traveled of my siblings.  My brother Nate has been to 74 countries, two of my siblings are at 60+, and two more are at about 50.   I don't think I'll ever catch them and that's okay, but that won't stop me from seeing what I can in my own due time.

Secondly, I have realized that I  have a deep deep love for other cultures and places.  There's just a yearning in me to see and experience the world from different eyes.  Reading books has provided that for me for many years, but there's just nothing that quite replicates experiencing things first hand.   Combining reading and traveling together turns it from just a surface experience to a transformative experience and I feel so blessed that we have been able to allow our children to have some of those transformative experiences!

So this post is all about our time in Belgium.   Our son-in-law, Garrett, had served his mission in the Netherlands and Belgium, so he gave us the scoop at places we should visit and our first stop was ANTWERP! 

We quickly realized after spending time in the Netherlands and Belgium, that the first place to begin our exploring is the Grote Markt of every town.  Grote Markt means "Great Market Square" and I'm not actually sure if every town has a Grote Markt, but it seemed that many of them did, and they tended to be in the cute old part of town.  The Grote Markt of Antwerp was especially charming and we enjoyed exploring there.

It wasn't very busy that day, so Ellie found it to be a perfect place to try out some of her dancing moves...

I have no idea where she gets her flexibility from!  😜

We thought this statue was completely charming! 

Ordering food in a foreign country is often an interesting experience.   We used google translate to figure out most of the food items...

but somehow we missed how large the pizzas were.  😆

After the Grote Markt, we just wandered around and explored Antwerp...

Steen castle was on my list of places I wanted to visit, but, alas, some heavy duty renovations prevented us from getting a better look than this postcard and across-the-street view.

It rained literally every single day of our trip, but the next day started off especially wet!  

Luckily the rain had let up a little by the time we'd trekked to our next destination of Bruges!

With cute gingerbread style houses, cobblestone streets, and picturesque canals, Bruges is a lovely place to visit!   Normally crawling with tourists, we were grateful to be there in the off-season to enjoy the narrow streets with lighter crowds.

We once again enjoyed exploring the Grote Markt of Bruges.

We also visited the Studhuis Museum and walked to the top of the Belfry Tower of Bruges.  

 According to Wikipedia: "The Belfry of Bruges is a medieval bell tower in the centre of Bruges, Belgium. One of the city's most prominent symbols, the belfry formerly housed a treasury and the municipal archives, and served as an observation post for spotting fires and other danger."

  

We discovered that it's also a great place to get some exercise...

and get a fantastic view of the city from the top!

Seriously!   Look at this place! 😍

They also had some fun food being sold at the base of the Belfry.

After that we headed to the Gruuthuis Museum.

We may have been feeling a little silly by then...

After that we drove about 30 miles to the lovely town of Ghent!

One of our first stops was to "Graffiti Street", also known as Werregarenstraat.  I'm normally not a huge graffiti fan, but this place was so cool to visit.   What used to be a boring alleyway connecting two larger streets,  is now an ever shifting kaleidoscope of color and street art.  

Our only regret is that we didn't have any tools (spray paint or sharpies) with which we could add our own contributions to the art.

After that we found some fresh "Noses of Ghent" to try.   What are the Noses of Ghent?  Good question.  Let me enlighten you...

In Dutch, the noses are referred to as "Cuberdon". Here's one of the many stands we saw throughout the city.   Apparently there's quite a competition between the stands.

Here's a close-up...

"Known as cuberdons, neuzekes or 'little noses', these vibrantly-coloured soft-centred candies are said to look like noses and originate from the town of Ghent. Mimicking the jelly bean, they have a hard, thin and crisp outer BUT they house a super-sweet, gooey and sticky centre." Source sbs.com

There was so much fuss about them that we bought them from a couple different places, so we could try them out and see which we liked best.   

Frankly they were all too sweet and, in our opinion, totally over-rated.  We recommend sticking with Belgian chocolate, which we had plenty of and enjoyed immensely! 

Next we visited Gravensteen, a medieval castle dating back to the 1100's! 

And we just enjoyed exploring this beautiful place.

Ghent is one of the oldest cities in all of Belgium...

and the history is rich and interesting. 

 After a long day of exploring, we headed to Brussels, where we were staying for the night.  When we found out that Atomium was on our way to the hotel, we decided that a quick stop there was in order. 

Atomium was built for the 1958 World Expo and is still a sight to behold.

It was especially dazzling when it got a little darker and the lights came on.

We ended up staying at Atomium longer than expected and we were pretty exhausted by the time we got to the hotel that night.  

The next day we explored Brussels.

Brussels is a beautiful place...

but it's much bigger than Bruges and Ghent, so it was a lot of walking!

We thought Mannekin Pis (this small statue of a peeing boy) was hilarious and based on the crowds of people that were there, I'd say that it is one of the more popular draws in Brussels!  We were very surprised to find out that Mannekin Pis was created in the 1600's and has been stolen several times over the years.

Of course, we got  Belgian waffles topped with Belgian chocolate every day we were in Belgium.

We were pretty worn out to start the day...

and we had a long trek from the Brussels International Airport where we needed to return the car to the Brussels Charleroi Airport, where we needed to catch our morning flight. 

We saw a little police "show" along the way.   I have no idea what exactly they were doing or why  they were doing it, but they were entertaining. 

Before we started our long trek from one airport to the other, I made sure to get all of my Belgium postcards into the mail.

I may or may not be a little obsessed with sending postcards.

Stay tuned for Part 3 of this trip!

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