A VERY CHOCOLATEY HOLIDAY

I loooooove long weekends, and the Easter weekend is one of my favourites. My sister and I jumped at the chance to escape on a travel adventure, and the decision of where to go went something like this:

If Easter=chocolate and Belgium=chocolate, then Easter=Belgium.

Simples! (No, that isn't a typo, read this)

We caught the Eurostar over, my first time travelling under the Channel, and my joy at forsaking the horror of air travel was boundless. I love travel but hate airports, particularly the London airports, so the Eurostar is my new best friend.

We arrived at Brussels late in the evening, and managed to get completely lost almost instantly. It was impressive even by my own geographically-challenged standards. The 4-minute walk to the hotel took us about 45 minutes as we walked in the wrong direction, retraced our steps, took off again in a different (but equally wrong) direction, retraced our steps, then did the same again and again until we finally located the hotel. By the time we'd checked in, the only place open for dinner was a chicken shop. So my first experience of Belgian cuisine was a fish kebab and chips with mayonnaise. It was surprisingly delicious, but then again it was almost midnight and my taste buds are prone to be less than picky at that time of night. Still, no complaints.

The next morning we set off for Bruges, which was just as pretty and quaint and gorgeous as everyone else who's been there has already told you it is. It was also quite crowded with tourists, despite summer still being a few months away. I know I should be telling you all about the architecture and the history and other blah blahs, but for me this trip was really all about food and beer. And I'm pleased to report that both lived up to my very high expectations. I ate chocolate and waffles and chips with mayo (not all at once, although I was tempted). I even tried the moules frites (mussels with chips). I didn't know that I liked mussels, but apparently I do. Very very much.

When I wasn't stuffing my face with food, I was drinking beer. Oooh, the beer was yummy. We went to a bar/pub in Bruges that had 450 beers and a waitress who was magically able to recommend those that suited our tastes perfectly. My first request went something like this: "I'd like a beer that's not pale, but not too dark. I don't like it to taste wheatey but it has to have a nice flavour." If I were the waitress I would have served me with a slap to the face, however she delivered a lovely amber ale - the name of which I've inconveniently forgotten - which fulfilled all my requirements. Subsequent requests ("nice like the last one, but different") were also granted without complaint and every beer I sampled was delicious.

By the time we stumbled out of the bar/pub, the beer had induced in us just the right amount of happy buzz to fully embrace and appreciate the surreal quirkiness of walking into the Markt and finding ourselves in the midst of a Beatles concert. Did I say the Beatles? Yes I did. Dressed in their Sergeant Pepper finery, The Bootleg Beatles sang their way through the Fab Four's greatest hits to a huge crowd of adoring fans. McCartney was the only one who sounded anything at all like his inspiration, but it was fun nonetheless and cheesy good times were had by all.

As if that weren't weird enough, back in Brussels the next day we were confronted with the city's frankly inexplicable fascination with urination. I suppose an interest in bladder relief shouldn't be too surprising given the city's beer-brewing status, but they have gone a bit crazy with the 'pissing boy on a corkscrew/bottle opener/magnet/postcard/chocolate box' caper. Still, we couldn't resist visiting the oddly popular Mannekin Pis, a bronze statue of a boy weeing water. Wikipedia has some interesting legends about the origin of the statue but I think the greater mystery is how on earth it became such a famous landmark in the first place. Craziness. My theory is that it's one of those things that people go to see, just to work out why other people go to see it. Which is exactly what we did.

Not content with a fountain of little-boy pee, there's also a statue of a little girl pissing nearby. She, however, had less than a tenth of the number of visitors that the boy did. Discrimination, I say! They're both equally as creepy and disturbing in my view. And the advantage of the little girl statue is that it's opposite the entry to a basement pub that serves 2,004 different types of beer. Exploring that place was a great way to spend a few hours of my life.

So it was that with a shedload of beer and one last meal of Belgian goodness, this trip came to an end. We boarded the Eurostar and headed back to merry England. Now I'm counting down the days until my next overseas adventure, which is a trip to Budapest. Hopefully I'll have a better time than the last time I was there, when I was still suffering the effects of a stomach bug picked up in Bratislava. I'm already super-excited about hitting the healing waters of the hot springs. Hurrah!