Belgium: Waffles, Frites & All the Beer

After two days in Paris it was off to spend four days in Brussels. Getting around Europe is so easy and relatively inexpensive. We had train tickets to Brussels and the train system is pretty simple to understand. The best part of traveling by train (besides the views, those can be pretty sweet) are the train snacks. No, they don’t give you snacks (at least not on the trains we were on). You bring your own.

Hopefully you read our previous post about our time in Paris. If you did, you read that we stopped at a place called Bellota-Bellota to load up on the necessities: wine, cheese, meat and an olive cocktail mix. It was a relatively short ride to Brussels, only about an hour and a half. Just the right amount of time to enjoy the last little bit of Paris we brought with us.

DAY 1
We arrived in Brussels around 10 am and went straight to the hotel. Ubers are big in Europe. If our feet were tired or we were too far but not far enough to take a train we’d Uber.  We stayed at the NH Hotel Stéphanie which is located in the Louise shopping district. Lots of boutiques and restaurants plus the city center is about a 20 minute walk. Funny fact: there is another NH Hotel right around the corner from this one, so uber drivers were thoroughly confused when dropping us off.  We must have almost gotten dropped off at the wrong hotel a half dozen times by the end of the trip.

After we checked in, we walked about a half mile to Le Chat Touille….another cat cafe! After we discovered the one in Paris, we (Broad) just had to see if there were any near Brussels and Amsterdam and of course there were! Another honeymoon miracle! This place was adorable and full of friendly cats (and staff). We enjoyed some cat catuccinos, played with the kitties then started our adventure to beer!

We walked to Supra Bailly for our first Belgium beers of the trip. This is a cozy, neighborhood beer café. We had a beer and chatted with locals before heading to Michael Collins Irish Pub. So we didn’t necessarily want to head to an Irish bar in Brussels, but we wanted food and this was on our way to our next destination. It was an awesome bar. Amazing staff and delicious food. They even gave us recommendations for some local, non-touristy places to check out. After food we did a little tour of the historic city center. The city center is beautiful, but a few notes: Since its such a high tourist area, the prices in the cafés and bars around it are very high. Our advice while traveling is to always do what the locals do, while still making time for some touristy things. After all, you are a tourist, so there’s no shame in checking out some of the well known sights.

After our little tour we needed more beer. We decided to head to the famous Delirium Café. This infamous bar holds the record for the most variety of beers available, 3162 to be exact. In addition to a large selection of delicious Belgian beers, they have beers from all over the world. The place is very eclectic and busy. We were warned to be careful with Broad’s purse and our belongings just in case there were some unsavory people around. We had so much fun there. It was a little busy but the staff was still able to talk to us about what beers to choose. We sat next to some friendly Americans there also. For sheer variety, we recommend this place; just know that it’ll be kinda tourist trappy and crowded.

After Delirium, we made one more stop at another famous beer bar, Moeder Lambic. We didn’t know at this time that there were two locations (we stopped at the Fontainas location). This place specialized in lambic style beers and local Belgian craft beer.  After some delicious lambics, we made our way back to the hotel for the night.

DAY 2
We woke up early and made our way to Cantilion Brewery. If you love sours or Belgians or just beer in general you’ve probably heard of this brewery. Fun Fact: at one point during the early 2000s, it was the only brewery operating in Brussels! We wanted to get there as soon as it opened (yes we’re those nerds) so we could spend as much time there as possible! We arrived at 10:30 a.m. (they opened at 10:00) and were the first people in there. Pro tip: we were told this, didn’t believe it at first but glad we heeded the advice, but don’t walk there.  It’s in a pretty terrible area.  We were under a mile away and we still took an Uber there.  It’s also very unassuming from the outside, it basically just looks like a garage and not one of the beer making meccas of the world.  Upon entering though…it still looks like a garage.  Maybe more of a warehouse, but still nothing special.  But then you start to notice things: the small machinery that looks like it would only be found in a nano brewery, the young kid putting labels on bottles by hand, the pallets of fresh organic fruit.  It’s truly a sight to see; no frills, but great attention to detail and quality.  They are one of the only breweries in the world that rely solely on spontaneous fermentation to produce their beers.  This means that no yeast is actually introduced into the wort like at nearly every other brewery, here they just rely on the naturally occurring yeast in the air to ferment the beer.  For seven euro you get to do a self-guided tour (with an introduction from a brewery worker) of the entire place, and you get two tastings at the end. It was pretty awesome to tour this old brewery and then drink all the amazing beer. Seriously. We tried EVERY beer and it was hard to pick a favorite. We brought so many bottles back with us. So many.

After drinking some of the best beer in the world, we needed food. More specifically, we need fries and waffles. We headed towards the city center and stopped at one of the many waffle stands. Important travel note: when we travel we like to split food so we can try as many different things as possible. The waffles in Belgium are amazing. Cheap and loaded with whatever topping you can imagine. Our favorite: chocolate sauce, strawberries and whipped cream. Next to the waffle shop was a fries (frites) stand. In Belgium (and many other places in Europe) fries are commonly served with mayo (Broad’s favorite) and ketchup. They also have so many other sauces to choose from.

After fries and waffles we visited the famous Manneken Pis and headed for you guessed it, more beer! We stopped at a very neat and old bar, A La Mort Subite. After a delicious sour, we decided to walk around the city center and wandered into La Cave à Vin. A very unassuming, cozy champagne and wine bar.  We ended up talking to the bartender for quite awhile while we drank champagne and picked out bottles to bring home. He told us all the best spots to hit in Brussels and really spent a long time talking to us!

DAY 3
Our favorite day in Belgium! We purchased train tickets the night before and made our way to Bruges, (Brugge in Dutch) which was an hour train ride.  Bruges is sometimes referred to as the Venice of the North, as it’s a canal based city like Amsterdam. It is probably one of, if not, the most beautiful city we’ve been to. It is straight out of a medieval fairy tale.

We arrived around 10 a.m. and made our way towards the city center for coffee. After getting caffeinated we went to the Frietmuseum. This was not something we planned to do, it was something Broad randomly found online. She was VERY excited to go. We showed up right when they opened and were the second couple in. We learned about the history of potatoes and frites, (or friets, we found out there’s a couple different acceptable spellings) played with some interactive exhibits, and the best part were the frites at the end of the tour! Broad could talk about the Frietmuseum for hours but we’ll save that for another post.

After fries we made our way to beer! First stop was Bourgogne des Flandres. This brewery is located in the center of the city and sits on one of the canals. It looks like its right out of a hummel village. They’re known for brewing in the Flemish tradition by blending old and young beer together to achieve a perfect balance.

We then made our way to Brouwerji De Halve Maan. This place was packed when we were there. We grabbed beers by the bar and planned out the rest of the day. We went to The Chocolate Line for chocolates (Belgium really does have the best chocolate). After chocolates we needed lunch. Yup, this order was deliberate. We stopped at Poules Moules for giant pots of mussels and frites. We then strolled around town, stopped for a waffle and a final beer at De Garre (famous for their delicious house beer). After all the frites and beers and chocolate and mussels and beers we attempted walk back to the train station, got lost, got a taxi, found the train station, and went back to Brussels.

DAY 4
For our last day in Belgium we decided head to Brouwerij 3 Fonteinen. This was a quick train ride to a small town, Beersel. We spent most of the day at this brewery. Every beer we tried here was amazing. Founded in 1887, 3 Fonteinen is the only remaining traditional geuze blender, or geuzestekerij, in Belgium. So what that long word means is that they purchase lambics from other brewers and blend them to produce geuze, an amazingly complex and delicious sour beer. This was all they did for over 100 years until they purchased their own brewery installation in 1998, now they produce their own lambics in addition to blending those from other breweries.  This was Broad’s favorite place by far. The Lambics and Geuzes were out of this world.

When we got back to Brussels we ate more waffles, walked around the city and went to the other Moeder Lambic location. We were a bit exhausted from three fast-paced days in Belgium and wanted to take it easy. We also planned on getting up super early to head to Amsterdam.

Final Thoughts

• While we LOVED Bruges, we were not 100% in love with Brussels. Brussels was too much like a modern day big city. It was busy, a little rundown and expensive.  We’d recommend a day or two max there, making time to spend at least equal time in Bruges.
• We want to go back to Bruges but not go back to Brussels. You can get the delicious beer from Brussels all around Belgium and Europe.
• The train system is amazing. We thought we missed our train back to Brussels from Bruges but we we talked to a train station worker we were told to just get on another train! The trains are constantly running and the tickets we had just noted suggested times and not specific times you had to get on the train.
• Waffles and fries and chocolate. They are THE BEST in Belgium.

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