Not gonna lie, I wasn’t expecting too much of Brussels. My original plan was to arrive there from the Netherlands sometime in the afternoon, spend the evening wandering around, and then jet off to Brugge the next day. Too bad it took me twice as long as planned to get to Brussels, and I ended up with hardly any time the first day to explore.

But gosh, Brussels is awfully nice. I was so taken with the architecture there. The main square is absolutely stunning. And the waffles!! Oh man, to die for. I also felt obligated to sample some frites and chocolate (duh). You can’t go 30 seconds without seeing any of these things being sold in touristy parts. It was also pretty easy to wander off into the more residential and grungey parts of the city, which was a refreshing change of scenery.

But I was completely stoked for Brugge – everyone plays it up as being the quintessential medieval town, and by far the highlight of Belgium. And yes, I’d seen the movie ‘In Brugge’, so there was no doubt that I had to visit.

My experience of Brugge, however, was less than ideal. For starters, the weather was gross. Then I forgot that the train station was quite a ways from the old town, and I forgot how I was supposed to get there so I decided to walk toward it… except I ended up going the complete opposite direction and it was starting to get dark, so I hopped on the first bus I saw that was heading back toward the train station. Then I failed to get off at the right stop and had to get off at a bus terminal and walk all the way back uphill to the stop, which was the start of the old town. See, this is why I always travel with guidebooks!! I just didn’t have one for Belgium since I was only going to be there for a day or two. Never again will I make this mistake!

And oh, then it started to rain. I had to force myself to wander around but I just wasn’t feeling it. Brugge is SO commercialized now and super touristy. It borders on tacky, to be honest. When I felt like I had seen the bare minimum of the town, I went to a rustic little restaurant for dinner and treated myself to the house wine (being that it was the last night of my trip, and given the crappy evening I had endured, I think it was necessary) and some mediocre stew. Sigh.

I took a bunch of photos in Brussels, but not too many in Brugge (not surprisingly):

And a few from Brugge: