We began our adventure in Belgium in Antwerp. We caught a bus from Rotterdam which only took three hours. The buses here are much cheaper than the trains but often take longer. We are currently taking a mixture of both. We spent two nights in Antwerp enjoying the old architecture, some Belgium beers and a couple of museums. Antwerp also has one of the most beautiful train stations we have ever seen.

From Antwerp we caught a train to Bruges, my favourite Belgium city. We spent two nights here in a cool hotel with a view of one of the churches. Here, we really began indulging in the Belgium food specialties of fries, waffles, chocolate and more beer. We spent the day eating and drinking and wandered the streets in the evenings. Bruges is like a fairytale town, as you can see from the pictures.

While in Bruges we also took a day trip to visit Flanders Fields. On our tour we were driven around the main sites of Passchendaele all the way to the town of Ypres. Setting foot on the same ground that hundreds of thousands of men fought and died was a unique and sad experience. The ANZAC soldiers were well represented in this area with many memorials and grave sites, many of which did not have names. Visiting a place like this really reminds you of how devastating war is and still continues to affect the farmers who live there as they regularly dredge up old bombs. On the tour we were the only New Zealanders along with Australians, British and Canadians. Visiting the Tyne Cot grave site was particularly sad with so many unnamed graves and a large number of New Zealanders even when our population was so small.

After visiting Flanders Fields it made us see Belgium from a different perspective knowing that these beautiful, peaceful towns and cities were war zones only just over 100 years ago.

From Bruges we travelled to the Capital, Brussels where we stayed in a super modern apartment AirbnB for three nights. Brussels has some of the most ornate and intricate buildings we have ever seen. It was nice to enjoy these buildings with perfect warm weather. We even managed to watch the All Blacks vs South Africa game in an Irish pub along with lots of other kiwi fans.

We took a day trip to the city of Ghent where we enjoyed the last of the Belgium beer and fries for a while as we began our week long detox before Oktoberfest. Next post will be about Germany. *fries with slow cooked beef stew on them are my number one.