Tag: <span>brussels</span>

Oktoberfest 2012 – part 2

Wednesday, 26 September 2012
The trip on the night train was a little rough.  Doug and I were both coming down with some sort of illness (congestion & low grade fever) and neither of us really slept.  We got into Florence around 6am and found the bus station to catch the bus to Siena.  In my sickie fog, I had to ask a local (in Italian) where the station was because I couldn’t quite remember.  We found it, caught the bus without a problem, and made it to Siena around 7:30 or so.  It was still REALLY early, so we figured we’d find the hotel and leave our luggage until it was official check in time.  Well, between when I booked and when we arrived, the hotel had changed addresses, and we had no idea.  We stood outside, feverish and bewildered, until someone passing by saw us with our backpacks (and thank goodness I still remember enough Italian) and communicated that the hotel had moved, it was up the street.  It was still MUCH too early anyway, so we took up a spot in the Piazza del Campo and alternated taking naps on the sun-warmed bricks.  After we finally checked into the hotel, we found a pharmacy and some cold meds and then went back for a long nap since we were both pretty well beat.  It ended up being a very off day, but we needed the rest pretty badly.  We did manage to get up for a walk and dinner later in the evening and then it was back to the hotel for sleep.
Siena Panorama

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Thursday, 27 September 2012
We had booked a tour with a local company, so we got up and met our guide, Gianni, at the entrance to our hotel.  It may have been much more expensive than renting a car and driving around ourselves, but not having to drive and having the knowledge that Gianni had was really worth it.  Gianni took us to some little known places, knew the best wineries to tour and sample, and taught us about the wineries and how they worked.  We visited during peak harvest season, so most of the operations were in full swing and really neat to see at that level.  We stopped at the Borgo San Felice which was once a town, but had been completely bought up by a hotel company.  The whole thing, except for one house, was a resort.  As Gianni explained, people slowly moved away, closer to Florence and Siena, and this little town out in the country was getting emptier and emptier.  It’s happened a few times, apparently, and all sorts of celebrities will rent out the town for a weekend for events.  We made two stops at wineries for wine tastings, had an incredible lunch at a small, family-run restaurant, and wandered through little Tuscan towns all day long.  We got back to Siena around 5pm, wandered around for a while, and found an amazing dinner – wild boar was ‘in season’ and pici was on the menu, so we had our fill of some very regional and typical Sienese food.
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Friday, 28 September 2012
We got up early, found breakfast (espresso and a pastry) and got a taxi to the train station for the train to Rome and then out to Ostia.  There was a snafu with the hotel that I was pretty pissed about.  We booked the hotel four months in advance, but somehow they were overbooked and we got bumped to a ‘sister’ hotel that was further away and probably the most gaudy and tacky hotel I’ve ever seen.  Think Caribbean (palm trees, etc) meets Rome, meets China, with a military museum, ALL AT ONCE.  The room we were brought to was clean enough, but we couldn’t walk anywhere which was one of the benefits of the hotel I had originally booked at.  The plan for the day, since Rome was really a stop over for our flight to Brussels, was to go to Ostia Antica nearby.  It’s basically like Pompeii without the volcanic activity.  Really, IMHO, better than Pompeii, because you don’t have to go through Naples and it feels SO much bigger.  We spent the afternoon wandering through the ruins, and then went off to find dinner.  Well, the restaurants didn’t open till 7:30 or 8pm, and were pretty firm about that time, so we walked around and had a glass of wine at a cafe to waste time.  We ended up at a really wonderful little place that even gave us a complimentary cordial to finish the incredible dinner.  We got our pickup back to the hotel and prepared for the flight the following day.  By this point we were both feeling better and not hitting the cold medicine as much!
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Saturday, 29 September 2012
The hotel had a shuttle service to the airport which was nearby in Fiumicino, so that was thankfully an easy transfer.  Our flight was pretty short and we arrived in Brussels in the early afternoon.  A short train ride later and we were brought practically to the front door of our hotel.  Not bad!  The hotel was a B&B based out of an artist’s studio and the retired couple who ran the whole operation were really sweet.  The rooms were SPACIOUS and each had a different theme and color scheme.  Really neat – it felt so comfortable and like home.  Breakfast consisted of bread brought up in the morning with a layout of spreads (jam, nutella, etc) and coffee/tea, all do-it-yourself in the kitchen on your floor.  I really loved this setup and how well it worked.  We had been in Brussels the year prior, so we had a pretty good handle of where we were and where we wanted to go.  First stop was the Cantillon Brewery, my personal favorite brewery, ever.  They still make beer in the old fashion, using wild yeast, and have such a limited production that we can’t get it at home, so we brought a few bottles home.  Then it was off to Moeder Lambic for a few more beers before dinner.  The beer tends to be not as strong (ABV 5% or so), so it’s easy to sit around and enjoy a beer or three and not get totally sloshed.  We walked around the area around our hotel for a while, saw the Manneken Pis and the usual crowd gathered around him, had dinner, and made it back to the hotel.
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Sunday, 30 September 2012
We figured not much would be open on Sunday, so we decided to head back to the Military History Museum since we knew we missed a section of it the last time, plus, it’s free to enter!  We did sleep in a little though and took our time getting going in the morning.  On the walk there, we wandered through a flea market and oogled all the things on display, mostly antiques.  Turned out that we didn’t miss nearly as much as we thought we did at the museum, but we did get to go to the roof top and see a full panorama of Brussels which was pretty neat.  The musuem also had a special exhibit on the day-to-day items of soldiers during World War I and II which was pretty fascinating.  The things they brought with them, the things they were issued, things they made themselves.  After the museum, we went to find Wafels and Frites, as you do in Brussels.  We made a few stops for food and beer as the day went on, lingering for a while here and there, having a taste of some AMAZING Chimay 150th anniversary beer.  There was of course, Delirium, and another stop at Moeder Lambic before dinner which was Doug’s favorite, Waterzooi, and I had the Flemish Rabbit.  Brussels, I love you, and would love to spend more time seeing the rest of Belgium!
Brussels-Panorama

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The following day, which I don’t need to make a whole entry about, was our flight home, involving a 7 hour layover in Washington, DC.  Ick.  The joys of frequent flyer miles flights.

Overall, the trip was incredible – from the crowded and crazy fun time at Oktoberfest, and then to the more relaxed trip through Italy and Brussels, it was really an awesome vacation.  If you’d like to see more photos, I’ve got the full set uploaded to flickr, here.

Eurotrip 2011 – Brussels

Rome > Siena > Florence > Venice > Munich > Brussels > Amsterdam

 

March 24.  We got up early and caught the 7:23 am train from Munich to Brussels, transferring at Cologne (Koln) and arriving at 2:30pm.  It was a long trip on the train, but all first class again with meals and everything.  The ride from Cologne to Brussels was via Thalys and it actually had wifi available, even if it was spotty and unreliable.  Hopped a cab at the train station to our hotel for 10 Euros.  The hotel, Hotel Van Belle, was a very last minute booking and the only thing we could find that wasn’t over $200/night.  The reviews said it was in a sketchy area, and it was, but thankfully there was a shuttle bus than ran from the hotel to the downtown area throughout the evening.  It was safe enough, but I don’t think I’d stay there again – while going to sleep one night, we heard a girl outside the window yell, “Stop!  GET AWAY FROM ME,” in perfectly clear English.  Needless to say, we PacSafe’d our bags in the room and lashed them to the heaviest thing we could find.
That out of the way, the hotel is literally around the corner from the Cantillon Brewery, also called the Musée  Bruxellois de la  Gueuze (The Brussels Museum of Gueuze).  The tour was self-guided but there happened to be a tour group there as well, so we sort of lingered around to hear the speaker.  The whole process is absolutely amazing – we brew our own beer and this is just totally opposite everything we learned as brewers.  We’re taught to sterilize and sanitize everything and that an infection in the beer is bad.  Making lambics and gueuze in the traditional method means pumping your wort up to the attic and letting it sit overnight to capture wild yeast and bacteria, maybe even a few spiders and bugs.  Really!  The photo on the right, top is the cooling tank where the wort rests overnight.  Then the beer is put either in stainless steel fermenters or barrels and left to do its business of fermenting for a year or five.  Then it’s bottled (Lambic), or added to fruit (Kriek when it’s cherries), or blended together (1 yr old + 2-3 yr old barrels) to make a Gueuze.  The resulting brews are sour and can vary widely from batch to batch.  These folks are more interested in doing things the right way rather than mass production and what they make is absolutely incredible.  The tasting at the end was the highlight, and I’m super glad we can find it here as well.
Something of interest to note, Belgium is known for its beer, and throughout Brussels, I don’t recall seeing a single instance of Bud or Coors or any commercial beer.  Not once!  Who needs that swill when you’ve got the world’s best beers?
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It was getting late, so we went into the downtown area and had a few beers at Bonnefooi – it was rated pretty highly.  The staff was really nice, and they had a decent selection of brews.  We ended up at Le Fiacre (near the Bourse) for dinner.  I had Rabbit, Flemish style, and it was amazing.  Not something I’d normally eat, but hey, we were on vacation right?  We also saw the Manneken Pis (peeing statue) – it was definitely smaller than I thought, only about two feet high, but nonetheless hilarious.  He even gets costumes if there’s a local holiday or special event going on, but he was bare naked when we visited. DSC_7380

March 25.  This was our full day in Brussels.  The breakfast at the hotel was a huge spread.  We locked up our things again in the room and walked to the park for the
Musee  royal de l’Armee et d’Histoire Militaire (The Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and Military History).  On our walk, because Brussels in the political capital of the European Union, we saw a few police-led motorcades and areas that were blocked off or secured with razor wire and such.  We literally spent the whole day at the museum – the complex is HUGE – and only saw about 2/3rds of the museum.  There are a few photos to the right, but honestly, they had every single weapon, uniform, manual, equipment, machinery, etc that was ever, EVER made.  The top photo is the airplane hangar where they still do restoration work on parts and planes found in the countryside.  Below that was another hall filled with weapons and uniforms.  Then beyond that, there was a modern warfare hall about the same size that dealt only with WWI and WWII.  It included a mock-up of a 1940’s kitchen, bunker, and I just can’t quite describe the scale of how HUGE this place is.  Even if you’re not terribly interested in military history, it’s a marvel just to see the scale of the building and collection.  When we left around 3pm, the park was scattered with people toting six-packs or wine bottles, enjoying the sunny spring afternoon.  Places I could live?  Yep, check.
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We took the subway back to the center where we saw the Chocolate Museum with a demonstration by a Belgian Chocolatier (photo at right).  LOTS of samples of chocolate from all over the world.  We also did the Brewer’s Museum at the Grand Palace and had another beer sample.  There were stops for proper Belgian Frites (french fries) and Waffles smothered in as much Nutella as you could handle.Then we stumbled across Moeder Lambic.  There were 34 beers on tap with an incredible selection of Lambics, Dubbels, and all sorts of mind blowing beers.  There were bunches of little places like this – it was sort of like a coffee shop with people sitting around drinking a beer, relaxing with friends, doing work on laptops, etc.  We then went and found dinner at Le Cirio.  Doug had a traditional Flemish meal called Waterzooi which was sort of like a local version of chicken soup, but more incredible.  He also got his favorite beer, a Rochfort 10, to end the trip to Brussels.  Next stop, Amsterdam! DSC_7425DSC_7417DSC_7433

Slideshow of photos from Brussels