Friday Five- Brussels

Tomorrow morning (well technically today, since it's past 1:00am here already), TLS and I are driving to Brussels for the biannual Flower Carpet. We went to this event in 2010 and loved it. I have been looking forward to this for the past year and a half or so, and I am not sure how I will be able to sleep tonight.(On another note, I should probably start packing?) This will be our fourth time together in Brussels, and my fifth. Clearly we love this city. This week's Friday Five is dedicated to one of my favorite European cities.

1) Beer

just your average day at the grocery store

I am not a big beer drinker by any means. I dislike almost all of the beers that I've tried. Whenever I get beer here, it's usually a Radler (beer mixed with lemonade). However, I love Belgian fruit beers. Whenever we go to Belgium, we like to stock up on his and her beers (Trappist beers for him- including the Hermes Birkin Bag of Beer- fruity and pink for her). My favorite bar has a list of various fruit beers to pick from. I may have drank my way down it. Twice.

*If you are interested in stocking up on beer in Brussels- by far the best selection we have found is at the Beer Temple. However, prices here are a little higher, so we usually go to the Del Haize supermarket first and pick up whatever we like from their selection, and then get the rest at the Beer Temple.

drinking from what is quite possibly the coolest glass ever

2) Chocolate

chocolate covered grape skewers from Leonidas

Yes this is kind of a no-brainer considering it is one of the things that Belgium is most known for, but good Lord is the chocolate good. Almost all of the shops have samples for you to try, and I love doing the walking chocolate tour- going into each one and trying a sample and buying a few pieces to try. Thank goodness we drive there instead of fly, because we always bring so much back with us, that there is a big difference between what our bags weigh when we get there, and what they weigh when we leave! (Coincidentally, there is also a big difference between what we weigh when we get there and what we weigh after we leave after all of the beer, chocolate, and frites!)

3) "Our" bar
I don't even know the name of this place, but there is a bar right off the Grande Place that T and I "discovered" on our first trip to Brussels, and it has kind of become our regular spot. It is where we first learned about Westvleteren. Like I said, their beer menu is great and the owner now recognizes us and treats us as regulars. Most of their seating is outdoors, and it is just a great place to sit, drink, relax, and people watch.

fun times

Seriously, if you held a gun to my head, I could not for the life of me tell you what this place is called, but for anyone who may be going to Brussels in the near future, I will try to remember to take down the name and address and give it to you. (Don't really know the address, but I could stumble my way from it back to just about any hotel at 2:00am. Hypothetically, of course.)

4) Food

Pretty much, if you know me at all, you know that food is very important to me. When I travel, I love to eat out and seek out the good places to eat. Usually, my must-see list is more of a "must-eat" place. Brussels is no exception. I love getting waffles and frites from the stands.

My favorite dish to eat there is Carbonnade a la Flamandes- a beef stew made with ale. It is delicious and I will eat it even when it is 90 degrees outside. (Which is good, because coincidentally, it is supposed to be 90 degrees this weekend. How about that?) My love of this dish got the concierge at the Marriott to recommend to us Fin de Siecle. (The restaurant does not have a website, so here is a link from a food blogger that describes it better than I ever could.) It has gotten a bit of a cult following in Brussels, and has top marks on TripAdvisor. They don't take reservations and the wait to get in can be long at times. I honestly don't remember if they take credit cards or not. We were not disappointed. Both of our dishes were excellent and were well worth the wait. We are going to Brussels with another couple, and it is the guy's birthday. His wife asked me if I could recommend a nice restaurant to go to, and guess where I suggested?

5) The Grande Place at Night

The Grande Place is gorgeous all the time, but at night, the buildings just look incredible when they are all lit up. Every night, at 11:00pm, the city puts on a light and sound show in the Grande Place with the colors and timing of the lights on the buildings set to music. I can not put it into words, but it really is incredible. When the Flower Carpet is not going on, people will just come and sit on the cobblestone street and look up and wait for the light show. It really is one of my happiest memories from Brussels. I am beyond excited to take my new DSLR with me to try to get some better pictures of it this time around. If you are ever in Brussels, be sure to catch the show. You will not be disappointed.

My Newest Obsession

It is no secret that I have a huge sweet tooth. I love sweets of just about any kind, but have always had a strong soft spot in my heart (mouth?) for caramels. When TLS and I were in Strasbourg, France over the 4th of July, we saw a brightly colored sweets shop that spoke to me. The shop in question is called La Cure Gourmande.

There are a few shops around Europe (I am ashamed to say that I did not see/go into any of them when I was in Paris) and they are easily discernible by their bright, mustard yellow doors/facades. The inside is even more colorful and gorgeous!

Just look at all of those mouth-watering biscuits!

La Cure Gourmande's best- known product- chocolate "olives."

La Cure Gourmande is known for its delicious chocolate covered almonds called "olives" but I am partial to its caramels which come in giant squares and are plain, with sea salt, nuts, dried fruits, or even a strip of nougat in the middle!

I am also a sucker for anything in gorgeous packaging or tins, and this store does not disappoint! Most of their items come ready for gift giving!

Our first trip to La Cure Gourmande was in Strasbourg where we loaded up on sucking candies in darling pink tins, nougat, caramels, and lollipops. The obsession grew exponentially and by the end, I was counting down to our trip to Brussels because it meant another stop at La Cure Gourmande. My last trip there I picked up a few chocolates that got eaten on the spot, more caramels, some caramels as thank you/care package gifts for a few bloggers, lollipops for the two of us, and a gorgeous lilac tin filled with raspberry biscuits that had preserves in the middle. Delicious. TLS has to remind me that there is a store an hour away from our house (in France) so that we (I) wouldn't go overboard in our (my) caramel pursuits.

Brussels Flower Carpet!

I have to print a retraction to my previous entry. I had written that the carpet has been going on since 1976, and I later found out that it has been held since at least 1970.

I had an amazing weekend with TLS finally seeing the carpet. TLS who hates crowds and driving in traffic greatly appreciated my desire to drive in traffic to a crowd, but even he had fun! The carpet was absolutely magnificent and I am so glad that I was lucky enough to finally see it. Each year's carpet has a theme. Previous themes have included Belgian lace, the Middle Ages, and the anniversary of Belgium's independence. This year's carpet celebrated Belgium's presidency of the European Union.

Here are some of my pictures of the carpet:

TLS did say that he was a bit disappointed because of the amount of grass that was used, he felt that it was sort of cheating. If you look at previous years' carpets, there definitely is a lot less grass in them. The artist who designed this was only 23 years old so my guess is this was his first attempt. Grass or not, I had a fantastic time, and we are already planning to go back in 2012 and 2014!

Tomorrow Afternoon, I will be Here

Every even-numbered year since 1976, for one weekend the city of Brussels sets up a carpet made entirely out of flowers in the Grande Place. No two carpets are ever the same. They use over 750,000 flowers and pack them so tightly that no soil is used at all! I have been wanting to go see this since 2002 and it was on my list of things to do in Europe when we moved here. I thought that we missed the 2010 carpet, but when we were in Brussels last month, we saw fliers about it, saying that it would be this weekend! As soon as we learned that, we knew we had to go! Brussels is only about 3 hours door to door from our house, so we booked a hotel room for Saturday night and are leaving early tomorrow morning. I cannot wait to see this! I promise to report back with pictures from this year's carpet.

Wordless Wednesday- Nom Nom Nom

The Hermes Birkin Bag of Beer

Our first night in Brussels, TLS and I went to find a bar close to our hotel and La Grande Place to have a few drinks in. I am not a beer drinker by any means, but I adore all of the Belgian fruit beers, so my only requirement was that it have an extensive fruit beer list. We founds such a place with outdoor seating, and sat down. Unlike me, TLS is a huge beer fan, and was excited to try some more Belgian beers. All of the beers ranged in price from 1,70-6,00€, and there was one outlier that cost 12€. Thinking it either had to be a typo, or a jeroboam of beer instead of just your normal glass, we asked the waiter about it. He told us "it's the best beer in the world, but I'm out of it for the month." This, of course, made us even more curious and made TLS want it even more. When we got back to our hotel room, we did a Google search for it.

The beer in question is called Westvleteren. It is made by Trappist monks in Belgium. They make only what they need, and no more. If you want to buy the beer, you need to order it directly from the abbey. They have a phone number that you call, and you have to give them your license plate number. Each person is allowed to buy one case of beer/license plate/month. You need to order the beer two months in advance. Once you have called for the month, the system will recognize your number and will block it from getting through again for the end of the month. The beer comes in bottles without labels and it is against the monk's wishes to resell the beer. If you do that, you can lose all of your ordering privileges. This makes it surprising that the bar would put it on their menu. I guess it doesn't get many Trappist monks as visitors. Since 2002, it has been ranked as the best beer in the world, giving it even more of a cult following.

Our second night in Belgium, I decided to be coy and just walk into one of the beer shops and try to order the Hermes Birkin Bag of Beer and see what the proprietor would say. This is when being a girl helped. The proprietor told me that because of the high demand but low supply, it is very expensive for stores to carry the beer, so it is actually illegal in Belgium to sell Westvleteren if you are able to get your hands on some. He did tell me that another one of the beer shops in Brussels does sell it illegally.* At this point, TLS was overjoyed at my cleverness and you would have thought that Hannukah came early.

The next day, we made a pilgrimage to the anonymous beer store. After loading up two bags with two dozen beers, at the cash register I once again very sweetly mentioned that there was a great beer I had heard about that I just needed to try, I could not remember the name, if was Westvsomething or other, would they by any chance carry it? The woman at the cash register told me that they did carry it, and from a locked cabinet behind the register, produced three unmarked bottles of beer, one of each of their varieties. We asked to purchase one of each. The cost, 7,95€, or $10.25 in today's prices. That's right, we paid over $30 for just three bottles of beer. I have to say that I felt a bit like I was in the Prohibition era walking down the streets of Brussels carrying three unmarked bottles of illegal beer in my hand.

Last night, TLS drank the first of the three Westvleterens, the blond one. He said that it could best be described as a religious experience. I am not a beer fan by any means, but I had a few sips of his beer and I have to say that it was pretty darn good. We are now trying to get on the monks' waiting list. Which is words that I never thought my Jewish mouth would say.


*For confidentiality reasons, I will not post the name of it on my blog. However, if you are planning on going to Belgium and would like to try some, you can email me and I will give you the name of the shop.