Belgium is yet another great European country full of history and culture. It is a small heaven between the Netherlands and Germany, and its capital city, Brussels is approximately 2 hours train ride from Amsterdam, Netherlands. Jugni strongly believes that Belgium is a lot more than chocolates, waffles and beer, there are a lot more things to do in and around Belgium. Let’s utilise some of your quarantine time to do some research for your next trip 🙂
Let’s start with the very famous Bruges – an hour train ride form the capital city, Brussels. It is the most touristy place to visit in Belgium. It offers a massive variety of street waffles, fries and beer located right in the heart of The Square of Bruges, which indeed is a pretty place to spend a day At. The pictures should give you an idea.
Travel Time – Bruges is one hour Train Ride from Brussels. Jugnu and I love to drive, so we drove from Amsterdam and it took almost the same time as train (3 hours). We ended up making an on the spot plan to visit Dinant, which was another 2 hours 20 minutes from Bruges. It took us 3.5 hours To get there, as we drove slow(er) and enjoyed the picturesque views on the way.
We took a halt at one of the delightful cafe’s to refresh ourselves and couldn’t believe what nature offered there. The below picture is for real, I still can’t believe I was right there with my feet in the water, sipping coffee and witnessing this untouched beauty of Namur.
Continuing the journey, after 40 minutes, we arrived in Dinant. We got lucky with the parking and found a nice spot in the big parking lot right next to the famous citadel, 5 mins walking distance.
Few things we did in Dinant:
1. Walk by the River Meuse – It gave us Bollywood movie-like European countryside feel. ThIs river flows through the Netherlands and Belgium and finally meets the North sea. The shadow of these beautiful houses in the river looked unreal and just took our breath away
2. La Citadelle Dinant – It rests on Top of a rocky cliff, and has breathtaking views from the top. You could either climb 400+ steps or take a cable car ride (costs 11 euros). Jugnu being the excited one, ended up taking the stairs and felt so pumped about it. These are a lot of stairs so be super sure about it and don’t make an impulsive decision. We visited in the month of August, the weather was sunny and nice but on the top of the Citadelle, it was very windy.
3. Saxophone Bridge – It is one of the most fascinating things to see in Dinant. The entire bridge is lined with colourful saxophones in order to give tribute to Adolphe Sax, who was born in Dinant, was the inventor of Saxophone.
4. Solbrun – After strolling through mesmerising beauty of Dinant, we went to this amazing cafe, Solbrun and enjoyed Belgium delicacies. We still haven’t come across waffles as good as these, anywhere else.
We ended up spending a full day in Dinant. I’ll write a separate post on Bruges with some photos and recommendations. We’ve been there twice, and still feel we could / should go there again.
Until next post, flying away
Jugni
Hey, Jugni 