A little gem in Rue de Flandre

I'm really excited about the neighborhood of Sainte-Catherine in the centre of Brussels. It is perhaps the most interesting place in the city when it comes to nice bars and restaurants - and some handsome and tall Flemish guys.

There are plenty of places in Rue de Flandre I still need to visit and some places where I want to go back. The other day, I discovered the very lovely art café John and Rose. Once again, a bit of a Nordic design and lots of open space that makes it ideal for a nice brunch. The coffee wasn't as great as in some of the places I've recommended here, but otherwise the food was nice and simple, and the service friendly. A place where I want to go back.

P.S. What what, this place is not in my The 500 Hidden Secrets of Brussels guidebook. It would definitely fit there!

Spring at the Flagey market

One week of spring already - and oh boy, do we welcome it warmly in Brussels after all those grey and rainy days of January and February. It is just what I needed after my Brussels angst catalyzed by a combination of bad service and public transports (the usual suspects...). 

As the thermometer passed +14°C, we headed to the Saturday market at Place Flagey in Ixelles after the yoga class. It was time to celebrate with some cava and oysters. A perfect day!

And yes Flagey market, or no. 209,  features of course on the list of "The 5 best street markets in Brussels". And I managed to do a double check in my Brussels' secret list with the Flagey Oyster Bar, no. 54, in the list of "The 5 best places for cheap eats". 

However, it should be noted that with the enormous success the Oyster Bar has at the market, they have increased the prices from 6€ for a half a dozen oysters to 9€ and for a glass of cava from 2€ to 4€ (the cheaper prices are mentioned in my guidebook from 2012). So I don't know if this is so cheap still, especially because you still need to eat something "real" afterwards. But well, definitely a great place for a little decadence.

Discovering Brussels Canal

Just in my last post I mentioned the "missing water element" in Brussels, but of course, there is the canal. However, it is quite well hidden, and it was only a month ago, when I went to see the Brussels Affordable Art Fair at Tour & Taxis exhibition complex, I finally saw it. The neighborhood seems to have developed in recent years and some nice apartment buildings have been built along the canal. Unfortunately, the full potential of the neighborhood is all but used.

The canal is only a few hundred meters away from the cool neighborhoods of Dansaert and Sainte-Catherine, but it is also a clear social border that divides different communes. Just after the canal, you find the infamous commune of Molenbeek, which is known for high rates of poverty, social problems, and concentration of immigrants. You don't need to live long in Brussels to hear about Molenbeek and how it should be avoided. It is among the poorest communes in whole Belgium, but only a walking distance from the fancy shops of Avenue Louise, which only highlights the drastic inequalities in the Brussels region.

I must admit that only now, looking more closely at the map, I realize that this is where Molenbeek starts. I only walked along the canal so I didn't venture more inside to the neighborhood. By the canal, it was rather nice.

My destination was the Affordable Art Fair, an annual art fair where you can buy contemporary art with a more modest budget (I think the upper limit is 6 000 Euros, but most pieces were around 1000 Euros). I can definitely recommend this event even for those not planning to do any art purchases. Below some nice sculptures that caught my attention. Next February again!

Windy meditation escape

I got tired of city-living and decided to do a little countryside escape to the region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais in France. 

I took the 1-hour Eurostar train to Calais on a Friday evening and spend the night in Calais before heading the next morning to Wissant, a small village by the sea. 

For frugal travelers, it should be mentioned that there's no buses from the Eurostar train station to the city centre of Calais in the evenings, so you need to take a taxi for the 10km trip which means 30 Euros on top of your train ticket. Luckily, this expense is a bit compensated by the fact that the bus from Calais to Wissant is only a ridiculous 1 Euro.

The trekking map can be found here with instructions (but it's not very good, so I also used my mobile phone's map on the way). 

I had found some options for little treks in Côte d'Opale (the Opal Coast) and decided to do this 27 km trek in Le Cap de Gris-Nez. After arriving to Wissant around 9 o'clock, I immediately headed to the beach and started walking towards Cap Gris-Nez. It was windy but sunny, and it was good to smell the sea and jump over puddles of seawater. Open water is something you really start to miss in Brussels. How can a city thrive without a river or a coast? Maybe this is the ultimate problem with Brussels...

On the background you can see Cap de Blanc-Nez.

After the beach, the trek continued a bit inlands in the dunes and was better covered from the wind. However, it wasn't like this for a long. When I arrived to Cap Gris-Nez in the last corner of land, the wind was truly devilish and it stayed like this for the remaining 20 km I had to walk. Just before Audresselles, where I had lunch, I was so desperate that I even thought of taking the bus back to Wissant. Of course, I didn't.

There are some studies showing how spending time in the forest is good for your mental well-being and lowers your stress level. I was wondering for a while if any kind of nature-walking has the same effect, but discovering the wind, I realized that at least walks by the sea cannot have this well-being effect. At moments, the sound of wind was so strong I could hardly hear my own thoughts. But well, maybe that was the meditation part of the trek: you basically focus all your energy and thoughts against the wind. Maybe it's healthy to feel angry at the forces of nature, afterwards there's no angst left in you.

While the part of the trek that followed the coast was beautiful, the inland part was very dull flat agricultural land where your thoughts are mostly concentrated on EU agricultural subsidies and erosion (if not on wind). For someone seeking a true nature-experience, this is not the place. But as an outdoor sport activity the trek was ok and you do deserve your beer back in Wissant.