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You can’t go wrong with a room at the Be Manos – a new boutique hotel next to the Eurostar terminus with a five-star rating. It’s very chic and also has an excellent conference room.
For a quality lunch, pay a visit to the Museum Brasserie, which is in the Museum of Fine Arts overlooking the Palace Royale. It has a menu terroir of Belgian cuisine cooked by the Michelin-starred chef Peter Goossens.
As well as news and interviews, The Bulletin has a great listings section, which reviews restaurants and bars and tells you what’s going on in the city.
Le Bier Circus - fantastic beer list (look at the vintage beers) and typical hearty Belgian food.
Rue De l'Enseignement 57/Onderrichtsstraat, Brussels, 1000 BELGIUM
For the festive period, there’s a great Christmas market at Place Sainte Catherine in the Old Town, complete with a Ferris wheel and ice-skating rink. This is a great place to while away an hour or two and pick up some stocking fillers while you’re there.
Aux Armes De Bruxelles is a long-established restaurant near the Grand Place with an excellent menu and good beer and wine list. The moules are to die for. I ate there every evening on my last trip.
Address: 13, Rue des Bouchers - 1000 Bruxelles; Phone: +32 2 511.55.50; Website: www.armebrux.be/
Place Saint-Géry is a great place to grab a drink in the evening in Brussels. There are also great restaurants around this area.
Place Saint-Géry
La Quincaillerie (if you can pronounce it) is the place to go for upmarket Belgian dining in the atmospheric, bustling setting of an old ironmonger's store. It's a really memorable experience for visitors to Brussels and has fantastic seafood.
45 rue du Page, Brussels
www.quincaillerie.be
+32 2 533 9833
Hortensia is a B&B in the city of Ypres, a few minutes from the city ramparts at the Lille gate. I have stayed in a number of Ypres B&Bs and hotels, and while they were all satisfactory, I found Hortensia to be excellent in all respects. The owner, Andre Parys, is exceptionally friendly and helpful, offering bike rental, storage for motorbikes and bikes and insider knowledge of the area. The rooms are spacious and spotless and the breakfasts excellent. Hortensia is located near the Lille gate, which means you can have yourself a nice walk on the city ramparts to the Menin gate ceremony and any one of the nice restaurants and tea rooms in town. Parking is plentiful nearby. Value for money is excellent at just over 60 euros for a two-person room. I plan to return here whenever I come back to Ypres.
Contact Andre Parys for reservation and/or information by going to his website:
www.guesthouse-ypres.be
Unlike many galleries that concentrate on one period of history, the Groeninge Museum in Bruges has a collection that spans six centuries of Flemish tradition and is a truly fascinating insight into artistic development in the region.
Dijver 12
A great café chock-full of some of the best cakes and sweets in Bruges according to the locals who go there – and in a city famed for its deserts, that’s saying something!
The hot chocolate was literally hot milk with pieces of chocolate for you to melt in yourself. Sickly, maybe, but definitely delicious – you’ll find it hard to go back to instant stuff when you return…
Geldmunstraat
Pretty much the only time when food and drink around the Markt square is affordable is every Wednesday morning when it’s taken over by market stalls.
With a range of cheap, fresh and tasty offerings like rotisserie chickens, olives, cheese and international dishes, it’s the perfect place to bag a picnic or stock up on self-catering ingredients.
Centrum, Markt
Instead of ketchup, the Belgians eat their chips (or fries for the Americans) with lashings of mayonnaise. Slightly odd perhaps – but a trip to Bruges has converted me!
‘Frites’ stalls around the city centre do them cheap, along with meatballs and sausages for a good snack.
Across the road, waffle stands and bakeries sell dessert dripping with chocolate and cream. What more to say except 'yum'.
This little Bruges hostel was a real bargain – friendly, clean and better decorated than many more expensive places I’ve stayed in around the world.
The included breakfast is pretty extensive – more than the usual cornflakes – but most importantly I think it is has the best location in Bruges. Just off T’Zand (one of the main squares), it’s a short distance from everything you could want to see or do in the city.
www.hostelbookers.com/hostels/belgium/bruges/3925/
Hoogste van Brugge 2, Bruges
Friendly and smart snack bar and restaurant a short walk along Lille street from the Gros Markt square. Fresh food, well cooked and good value for money.
Rijselstraat 49
www.hetzilverenhoofd.be
057 360367
Eiper station
Remember your Brussels Eurostar ticket covers same day onward travel to all stations in Belgium. This includes Brussels Central Station, so you can use it instead of the Metro to get across town from Midi station to your hotel or meeting near Brussels Central.
Having used the been there to plan a short trip to Belgium I thought it only proper to note down my experiences for the reference of other visitors.
We travelled to Bruges in our own car via ferry from Dover to Calais – for our trip we found that this was the most cost-effective means. The drive from Calais to Bruges is not arduous and took less than 1.5 hours - sat nav makes it all the more simpler and brought us to the door of the Anselmus Hotel in central Bruges.
We found that this was a very comfortable, friendly family-run hotel that we could heartily recommend. It is ideally located close to the central area.
The city is fabulous – we enjoyed ourselves immensely. Take the canal tour and get a view of the local Flemish architecture, visit the Chocolate museum, watch the demo and sample the goods. Have hot chocolate and waffles in one of the street cafes as a mid morning snack or maybe grab a portion of chips and mayo from the mobile frituur in the market square, browse the unique shops – not too much sign of globalisation here!
For our meals we found excellent mussels and frites at Breydel-de-Coninck just off the main square at Breidelstraat 24 and for an alternative evening we could recommend the Grand Café de Comptoir with their excellent selection of international dishes, warm welcome, elegant décor and reasonable prices.
Then there’s the beer, you can visit a local brewery but if it’s the business end of the operation that you are interested in you will not be disappointed by the selection of bars and pubs and the variety of local beers on offer – close your eyes and take your pick.
The following day we visited Ypres (Ieper), about 70 km away, where you cannot fail to be stirred by the tragedy of the first world war. The museum named ‘In Flanders Fields’ in the main square of the town and only a short walk from the Menen Gate really puts a subsequent driving tour of the battlegrounds and cemeteries into vivid perspective.
Near Hill 62 you can view the trenches and let your imagination construct what it must have been like to fight in these conditions. The largest allied cemetery at ‘Tyne Cot' has over 12,000 graves regimentally aligned plus a wall of remembrance with thousands upon thousands of names of those who fell but have no known grave.
Bruges and the locality have much to offer visitors looking for a city break with a difference – I look forward to going again at some stage.
Check out the hotel at en.venere.com/belgium/hotels_brugge/hotel_anselmus.html?fe1&ref=682988, Breydel Restaurant site is www.breydel-deconinc.be/
Hand-made Belgian chocolates are very different from the ones we buy in the shops in the UK. Fresh ones contain no preservatives and use 100% cocoa butter and fresh cream. They are light and delicate and have a shelf life of about six weeks.
On the other hand factory-made Belgian chocolates will not be as subtle in their flavours nor as delicious.
The master chocolatier that created these fresh ones will have used all his skill to ensure the chocolate coating is as thin as possible so that the filling becomes the hero!
Having said that, you should not be afraid to order hand-made chocolates through mail order delivery. They travel well (except to hot climates) and will not last long enough to be kept in storage when you receive them!
Two shops in particular come to mind in offering a mail order delivery. Dumon - through his web site contact Chocobong - and The Old Chocolate House where you will deal directly with the owner Francoise.
The large new shop for Dumon is on Simon Stevinplein and this is just round the corner from The Old Chocolate House on Mariastraat
www.oldchocolatehouse.com/Assortment.html
Okay - so I am addicted to Bruges and its' chocolates! I was back there again this last weekend and my wife travelled to Amsterdam with her friends and then stopped in Bruges on the way back.
So many people from the UK are going there to buy their chocolates and see the sights and it definitely is not too late to plan a trip. If I set off from London in my car I am in Bruges in less than four hours.
My wife and friends went to Simon Stevinplein as that is where the best selections of handmade pralines and figures are to be found.
I was here, yet again, last week to stock up on Belgian chocolates and figures for my children and to visit the Wednesday market in the main square and the Saturday market near the bus station.
Bruges is great at any time of the year but Easter is one of the best for the window displays and unusual, for us in the UK, chocolate gifts.
The nearby Simon Stevinplein and Mariastraat have the best chocolate shops in town.
Mariastraat #1 - just next to Simon Stevinplein
www.oldchocolatehouse.com/Map.html
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