Our week started out pretty busy. It was the last week of the third quarter for the school year and we spent every free moment in the evenings trying to help the kids complete projects and final assignments. Thursday was officially the last day of the quarter and we cannot wait for a fresh start in school after Spring Break!
Thursday night, Brooklyn had high school orientation. I can’t believe it’s already time for this, but here we are. From what it sounds like, it’s going to be pretty challenging and rigorous, but Brooklyn is super excited about all of the clubs they have and about being able to take AP classes.
Friday morning officially started Spring Break! We left super early, dropped the dogs at the kennel, and hit the road.
The plan for our trip was Belgium and Normandy. Our first stop was Dinant, Belgium because we needed a break from the car. The weather was so gorgeous and the Belgian beer went down really smooth (for me-Matt had a coffee). Dinant is on the Meuse River and backed by a cliff, topped with a castle. I picked it as a stopping point after seeing pictures posted of it in a travel group I’m in and it didn’t disappoint. I wouldn’t pick this place though as an overnight stop because there really isn’t much to do.
After Dinant, we finished driving the rest of the way to Brussels. We got checked into our hotel and went for dinner. Brussels is interesting; it’s the capital of Belgium and the European Union, and one of the most expensive cities in Europe. Our hotel was a block from the European Parliament, where the NATO Summit was held just one day before. And yet, you can still make a wrong turn, walk two blocks, and suddenly you’re in not such a good area. There were a couple of times we had to shuffle pretty fast to move on.
Saturday, we hit all the big sites in Brussels: the Royal Palace, the Grand Place (market square), Mannekin Pis (the statue of a boy peeing), chocolate shopping, and we even ate some waffles in a cafe. Then it was 11am. Seriously, we hit all the landmarks in about 2 hours! The Royal Palace was not open, I’m not sure that was temporary or normal but that would have taken up more time if it had been open. There is also a chocolate museum, but it was €18/person and when the kids expressed their disinterest, we decided to strike that from the list as well.
It was at this point that Ryan told us Brussels was boring and he asked if he could pick somewhere to go. Naturally, he picked a military museum; it was over a mile away but he used Google Maps on his phone to direct us there. He did so great, I’m going to start making him plan all of our trips!
This museum was huge and took up a large chunk of our otherwise empty afternoon. When it says War Heritage Institute, it really means all wars. It seemed to cover every war to have ever happened in Belgium; the 100 years War, Napoleonic Wars, WWI, and WWII, and more. There was even a giant hangar filled with different aircraft. By the time we got to the end, we could tell even Ryan had gotten his fill.
Our walk back to the hotel took us past several European Union buildings, which was cool to see.
Sunday, we packed up and hit the road again. Our first stop was Ghent, about an hour northwest of Brussels. It used to be a medieval port city, but is now just a quiet university town. We walked around and ate more waffles and fries.
Next stop was Bruges, another hour up the road. Bruges is supposed to be one of the must-see cities in Europe, another medieval port city. It no longer has a harbor so it relies on its cuteness to make tourism money. The weather wasn’t cooperating though, so despite it being super cute, we were a little underwhelmed. I personally liked Ghent better, but maybe I just need to give Bruges a second chance on a warm, sunny day.
Back in the car, we made the final drive of the day to De Haan, on the North Sea coast. At this point, the sun finally decided to come out after a full, cloudy, misty day.
We checked into our Airbnb, ready to wash our clothes. But, the Airbnb’s advertised washer and dryer were at a laundromat around the corner 😂 so we decided to try to hold out on doing laundry until our next Airbnb with the clean clothes we had.
We took a walk on the beach and on the beach-front promenade. There were a ton of restaurants and we had dinner at one on the beach. De Haan was a great place to stop for the night; but again, I wouldn’t try and make it a full day’s stop unless it was a hot summer day and you were going to the beach.
Overall, Belgium was pretty underwhelming. There didn’t seem to be much to do in any of the stops we made and everything we did could probably have been crammed into two days, including the drive there. It doesn’t mean that we didn’t enjoy ourselves but we probably won’t be coming back to Belgium, at least for awhile.
We did have an entertaining conversation during the trip where we each listed places we didn’t think we wanted to revisit. Most of the time, our answers were the same with a few surprising outliers. We all agreed Brussels, Milan, and Zürich were places we didn’t need to see again.
Despite there being places on each of our lists that we wouldn’t want to go back to, we are happy to have at least gone once because otherwise, we never would have known.
Gilcrests Abroad 