We stopped in the bakery directly across the street from our apartment to get a pastry. The line was out the door. The boulangerie smelled of warm golden crusts. They had great hunks of brown bread that they sliced slabs off of for people to purchase by the kilogram. Next to the line was a plexiglass partition where you could watch the industrial sized mixers with bowls the size of washtubs. I watched a great vat of dough be kneaded next to me. Round and round the paddle went. The baker, a young man in a flour-dusted navy blue apron and backwards baseball cap sipped coffee from a metal insulated cup covered with floury fingerprints.

– June 5, 2025

I felt relaxed in Brussels. Excellent beer abounded, and every meal came with frits (fries). On our first night, I ordered a Grimbergern Brune beer to go with my “typical” Belgian meal of Flemish beef stew which was made with Grimbergern Brune. I really wanted frits (fries) — I’d been wanting them since we’d gone to Lille two days earlier — and when I asked our server if the stew would come with frits, he said, “Everything comes with frits.”

Hell yeah!

I took one bite of the beef stew, and it transported me instantly back to childhood, to Mom’s beef stew on a winter night, leaning over our bowls around the family table. The stew in Brussels was rich and layered and velvety and hearty, especially on chilly wet night, with wind blowing and rain lashing us as we walked glistening cobbles. I sopped up the thick broth with my frits, which were golden crisp on the outside, soft on the inside, and perfectly salted. It was so good, I had an almost identical meal at a different restaurant on our second night, except this time the stew was made with Chimay Bleue, and so I ordered a Chimay Bleue to go with it. The quality was even higher than the first night’s meal, the beef tender and the broth dark and rich.

Brussels reminded me of Athens, Georgia, where I went to college, except Brussels is much bigger, speaks French, Dutch, and English, and is full of adults instead of college students. Brussels felt like Athens in that it’s edgy, kind of punk rock, and it feels like it would have a good music scene. On one of our walks around the city, my husband and I happened on a doorway with a sign over it that said La Porte Noir, The Black Door, with a brick stairwell that spiraled underground.

We of course investigated. We found ourselves in a dungeon-like bar with a bunch of unknown-to-us beers on tap. I asked the bartender for a recommendation for a dark beer. He said Lupulus Hibernatus. I said yes. The logo is a wolf passed out on on its back, pouring the last drop of beer in its mouth.

Our son loved Belgium. In his 2 days there, he ate waffles on four separate occasions. As soon as we dropped our stuff at our Airbnb, we found a cool coffee place nearby that serves waffles as a side to savory brunch in the same way we serve toast in the US. The brunch waffles came with spreads — some savory, some sweet — rather than syrup. A few hours later, he got a second waffle, this one covered in Nutella, banana, strawberries, and chantilly cream. He got it at one of the scores of waffle places near the Grand Place central square. In every direction just off the square, every other door you walked by smelled like waffles and had their own spin on toppings or presentation.

As with Paris and Lille, we walked and walked and walked. I felt like I was going to walk holes through the soles of the cheap white sneakers I bought for the trip. I got tired of carrying stuff after a while. Walking around Brussels, and on our day trip to Bruges, I didn’t take my camera, just my phone. I didn’t feel like carrying my backpack all day long, and my tote was already full with an umbrella, notebook, ereader, and sometimes sweater. So my photos aren’t as crisp or high quality as I’d have liked, which is a bummer, but.

But the Fritbar made up for it.

In Bruges, we walked a lot, and we stopped a lot for snacks. Our son wanted another waffle, which he got — this time with strawberries — and after that, he wanted a salty snack. He wanted frits.

Lucky for us, there was a place whose entire menu was frits, sauces, and beer: Fritbar. Our server was a lively, funny man with a German accent who was very involved in our orders. I ordered a dark beer on draft, and he said, “Oh, I have something even better for you, it will make you fly somewhere you’ve never been before.”

Of course I said yes. Bring me whatever you recommend. Our son said, One for me too, please. When he brought the beers, Straffe Hendrik Quadruple, our server poured them into the goblets tableside. He started with the bottle touching the glass’s rim, then lifted the bottle in the air to create a long stream from the bottle to the glass, swirling the goblet as he poured to build up the perfect head which was probably 2 inches thick.

The beer was strong, dark, and hearty, and I loved it. Our server kept stopping by our table to check on me, his eyes twinkly with mirth, telling my husband and son to watch and wait. The beer did feel wonderful, and I smiled at the fun the server was having, but I thought, he’s making a bigger deal than this is going to be. Then it snuck up on me, in the same way the anise drink did in Istanbul, where suddenly I felt high as a kite, and thought thank god I don’t have to drive anywhere because I would be incapable, and I might not even be capable of walking, and I laughed until my eyes watered, and my son and husband laughed, and our table was joyous, and our server stopped by and got a huge kick out of it all. I probably made his whole shift. Then, just like the anise drink in Istanbul, after about 5 minutes the high mellowed, and I just felt happy and content and soft around the edges.

As we drank our foamy delicious beer and dipped our perfectly fried and seasoned potatoes (I got sweet potatoes) into various sauces (our son and I got truffle mayo), I thought, why has nothing like this taken off in the US? It seems like everything we love best. All this place served was French fries, sauces, and beer*. I can’t believe every college town in America doesn’t have a Fritbar.

*I realized later that they also serve burgers and other stuff.

Our son loved walking in the rain on the cobbled streets of Brussels, and he loved the architecture in the central square. He saw it in the day and requested to go back after dark. He wanted to see the buildings lit up and the lights shining on the wet cobbles against the darkness of night.

I personally loved the Justice palace and the ferris wheel.

My husband, son, and I took the train to Bruges, where we walked among canals with greenery tumbling over brick and stone walls, ornate cathedrals, bicycles with baskets and teenagers riding double on the cobblestones, and bike bells gently dinging to ask all the tourists to please make way. We ambled without aim, just turning down streets when they looked cute, or pointing ourselves towards tall spires.