Christmas feels in Belgium

Brussels, Brugge and Ghent

By Michael Wilson

January 16^th, 2018

Brussels

I was finishing work in mid December so before heading home for Christmas I thought it would be a good idea to get the Christmas vibes going by spending a few days in Belgium.

We hopped on the Eurostar to Brussels and headed straight for an evening in the main square. At night the buildings in the square are lit beautifully and seeing as it was Christmas there was light parade set to some classic hits.

After taking in the atmosphere it was time to sample some of those incredible beers Belgium is famous for.

After a heavy night on the beers we decided to clear our heads with a cold walk through the city making our way up the hill to the palace region. As you'd expect, there's a lot of very grand buildings around.

It started to rain pretty heavily so we decided to head inside for some lunch. We found a nice looking place called Balls & Glory, which offered enormous meatballs which were filled with various flavours. It was really tasty and something I hadn't tried before.

On our way back down from the royal quarter, we explored as much of the city as we could in the time we had. One thing we noticed was the amount of art/graffiti that adorned the sides of most buildings. It really makes getting lost in Brussels a pleasurable experience.

We also came across the most amazing steampunk carousel!!! It was the coolest thing I had ever seen. There were so many cool moving parts, we watched it go round for ages :-)

Brugge

The next morning we jumped on a train and headed East for an hour until we got to our next stop, Brugge. The first thing we did was jump on a boat tour around the city before exploring the place on foot. Brugge is full of grand looking stone buildings and the main square is where you'll find the best of those.

The Christmas markets were on and all of the restaurants were decorated for the season.

Brugge is pretty in the daytime but it really comes to life any night. When the lights come on the city gets a completely different look. It feels like you've gone back in time.

Everywhere entices you in with really cosy lighting and most places have a fire to warm up beside.

Ghent

Our final stop was Ghent. I'll admit, I'd never even considered visiting Ghent until someone suggested it to me. I had a quick image search and the place looked like a fairy tale!

We arrived and it was as pretty as I'd hoped. Our first stop was the awesome Gravensteen castle. It's really cool to explore, there's a cool exhibition of the weapons used during the time, there's a chance to try your hand at Archery (I'm excellent) and there's a really good story to follow, which asks people to help the king decide who his successor should be. The culmination of which takes place in the dungeon where you're taken on a beautifully designed light show.

Ghent is a lovely place to explore. There's a turret seemingly everywhere you look and there's a nice river which runs through the area and is seemingly where most of the nice bars and restaurants are.

We stopped off for some lunch at a really cool place called the Holy Food Market. It is housed in an old church, so the inside is really nice where they've kept a lot of the original features. There's loads of food stalls on offer so plenty of choice for everyone.

Just like Brugge, the really beauty of Ghent can be found when the sun has gone. The lights and the reflections in the river add an extra sparkle to the area.

It was a whistle stop tour, which mainly consisted of drinking beer, hence why I took so few photos.

It was a great place to visit to get into the Christmas spirit and with it being a simple Eurostar trip away I'd highly recommend it (especially Ghent) as a place to discover,