I've done a dozen trips to Europe and I've always skipped Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam. I'm planning a 2 week trip for next year with my girlfriend and I'm considering biting the bullet and finally crossing them off the list. We would hit a couple other cities along the way like Utrecht, Ghent and Bruges. Typically, we're into castles, mountains, beaches, medieval villages, warm weather, old churches, hiking, biking, cocktail bars, aimlessly walking and rafting. I also have Portugal, Japan, Thailand, Bavaria, the Dolomites and Croatia on my bucket list. We can go anywhere in the world, should we do the Paris/Brussels, Amsterdam trip or go somewhere else instead?
>>2722743What's your job where you can afford a dozen trips to Europe?
>>2722743You will love Ghent and Bruges, you will like the Netherlands and you will be disgusted by Brussels and Paris. Spent minimum time in Paris, skip Brussels. I've done all of the above places fyi and that's like my opinion . i've also done Japan and a bit of Croatia. Where else have you been to ? liked /hated
>>2722805I've really liked everywhere I've been in Europe. My favorite cities are Prague, Seville, Dubrovnik, Verona Italy, Český Krumlov. We usually travel in late September to avoid the summer crowds. I try to plan it so we're in the larger cities mid week. We've taken trains and done a couple road trips. We like to move around and see a lot of shit. Your assessment of Paris and Brussels is exactly why we've skipped them. I loved southern France and the Chamonix valley. But I'm not excited about hordes of immigrants and massive lines of tourists in those two cities. Have you ever done Brittany? Any other cities you'd recommend in lieu of Paris and Brussels? >>2722801Nurse in California
>>2722743You're into castle but you haven't done Paris?Have you skipped France altogether? At last do Versailles and the castles of the Loire valley (Chambord, Chenonceau...) staying in the northern part of France, then all the castles south of France.Also for medieval villages, Guérande, Carcassone, Mont Saint Michel...
>>2723001I do love France. I did a big road trip through southern France in 2017. We hit a lot of the old roman cities like Arles, Orange and Nimes. We did Aix, Cassis, Avignon and a couple villages. I've also done the Chamonix valley. I've avoided Paris. I do have Brittany on my list, but it's a lot of driving if I fly into Paris. I'm souring on the idea of Paris. Amsterdam, Bruges and Ghent might make a good trip. Honestly, I'd almost rather fly into Frankfurt and just rent a car and drive down the Rhine and do Heidelberg, Strasbourg, Colmar, Basel and then fly out of Zurich. I could get cheap direct flights on Swiss Air.
>>2723065You've been memed by the internet. Paris is the most beautiful city in Europe by far. Not saying the rest of France is not worth it but Paris is unavoidable in France.
>>2722975>But I'm not excited about hordes of immigrants and massive lines of tourists in those two cities.There is a reason why it attracts so many people, go see for yourself. Unless you have an allergic reaction when you see a black person. But then you're missing out.Brussels is not the same category, there is nothing to see compared to Paris so you're justified in missing it.
>>2723177It's hard to trust people who talk up Paris, because it's the first place in Europe a lot of tourists have ever been. I live in southern California and I'll be the first person tell you to avoid Los Angeles for the same reasons people say to avoid Paris. People argue with me all the time and say that LA is great, but I hate it. It's filled with homeless drug addicts, it's insanely crowded, it's ridiculously overpriced, and Hollywood is the biggest disappointment of a tourist trap you'll ever do on a vacation. Not to mention that there are 1,000 better things to do in California. It's the same kind of stuff that I hear people say about Paris. That's why I've avoided it. I need some real reasons why I should go to Paris instead of doing a road trip through Brittany or down the Rhine River.
>>2723179What other cities do you like? What do you do when you travel?
>>2723182No offense but comparing Paris to Los Angeles is the most stupid shit I've heard. Paris has 1500 years of history and the most beautiful monuments have been built in the middle ages. You're clearly a bit of a low IQ moron who have done too much 4chan and now projects political discourse into everything.
>>2723187It's not a political discourse to say that a place is overrun with drug addicts, immigrants and homeless people if it's overrun with drug addicts, immigrants and homeless people. It's just pointing out facts. I don't care how many cool buildings a place has if I have to deal with all that crap. I think it's a very fair comparison when people have the same complaints about Paris. LA and Paris get nearly the exact same number of visitors every year with about 50 million each. They're comparable and it's a valid comparison to point out the crime, grime and the crowds.
>ParisHas a bunch of interesting/famous landmarks etc but given the distances between them, you're ferrying yourself around between them without seeing much of anything else, which can make it feel like you're on a big tourist carousel with few locals. Never really enjoyed it myself for that reason, but haven't been there in years, don't know how much it has changed. >BrusselsFar more easy to walk between places so you get an actual feel for the place. Much better than people make it out to be if you know the city, but you'd need a local to show you around for that if it's your first time there.>AmsterdamHaven't been in ages but wasn't too bad. Never really wow'd me either. Being an avid cyclist myself, I'll hardly ever say this but the cyclists are a menace, keep your eyes peeled because they're wont to ignore any and all traffic regulations.Admittedly I like cities best when they can be navigated on foot and feel like I'm just part of life there, blend in so to speak, for example I don't like to frequent a restaurant devoid of locals. Also, yes, there's lots of immigrants in all three of them, but you'll have far fewer issues you may be led to believe. Beware of some of the more obvious scams in Paris, but not much to say other than that.>Utrecht, Ghent and BrugesAll far more enjoyable than the aforementioned three. Bruges is very touristy though, you might want to hop over to Damme if you find it too crowded. At this point that also goes for the other two really.
>>2722743I’ve only passed through Brussels, but people I know and trust like the place for beer and food. But I’ve been to both Paris and Amsterdam many times and unapologetically enjoy both quite a lot. Paris has some overtouristed corners, no question, but it’s still got plenty of history and charm. And small parts of Amsterdam are pretty disgusting (the area around Amsterdam Centraal is nastier than the European main train station average, which I think is an achievement; De Wallen is awful), but probably 2/3 of the city is actually quite peaceful and attractive. Both cities have a lot of immigrants, some neighborhoods more than others, but I don’t lose my cool about that; you still have to go out of your way to be completely surrounded/outnumbered by them. I spent a few days in Montmartre just recently and wound up in a few ethnic markets/shops that didn’t feel particularly French, but the streets still mostly did. And it’s still a very pretty neighborhood, plus I got some excellent Vietnamese food.I would personally avoid trying to cram too many destinations into a two-week trip, but I know a lot of people enjoy speed runs, so you can decide for yourself. Hitting a few Dutch/Belgian towns quickly is usually no problem, as it’s a small and well-connected area, but I wouldn’t want to visit more than two, maximum three countries in just a couple of weeks. But I am also pretty lazy when traveling, so YMMV.
>>2722975No i haven't been to Brittany. When i did visit those countries it was done in a single trip as a roadtrip from Amsterdam - Belgium - France and back to Netherlands.In france ive done Normandy-> Rhouen->Paris, it was 10 years ago.It was so repulsive that i never went back,I can't imagine how much worse things are now. I should probably give it another go at some point somewhere outside the big cities but for now i have other priorities.
>>2723287How’s Normandy or Rouen disgusting in any way, shape or form
>>2723943Not enough dunkin donuts and large parking lots
>>2723217We usually travel for 2 weeks and stay 2-3 nights in each location. We do our trips in mid September to avoid the peak tourist season. As I've been looking at the map, it looks like we can fly direct in Frankfurt Germany and direct out of Amsterdam. I'm considering 2 days in Heidelberg-2 in Strasbourg- 2 in Colmar-3 in Paris-2 in Ghent(with a day trip to Bruges)-3 days in Amsterdam. They're all connected by high speed rail, so we wouldn't rent a car.
>>2724219Seems OK to me. I love Colmar,hyper-touristy though it is; I live less than an hour away, and go on day trips there all the time (do not under any circumstances miss the Isenheim altar). It might not need two full days, though, if you wanted to be even speedier. You could spend a day in Colmar and a day in, for example, Freiburg, a cute little university city roughly an hour to the East. But as you’re already doing Heidelberg, you can also skip it without fear of missing out.
>>2724382…but having reread the thread and noticed that you’re into castles, I retract my above endorsement of Freiburg, which is still a nice place with an excellent surviving Gothic Münster, but is mostly just a small German university city, and instead suggest a day trip to the castle at Haut-Kœnigsbourg, just above the village of Sélestat, one train stop away from Colmar. A bus up to the castle stops at the train station, and you’ll pass through a pretty hillside village en route. The Chateau has been extremely heavily reconstructed in phases over the centuries, but the oldest bits are very old, and the way it was refreshed by Kaiser Wilhelm at the turn of the 20th century as a fantasy of an ancient and unbroken German empire is historically, politically, and architecturally interesting. Good views, too. If the soft serve vendor at the kiosk outside the main entrance is still in operation, the vanilla cone is also much better than you would expect.
>>2724395>SélestatThat castle looks rad. We'll definitely do that. We're planning on renting bikes in Colmar and riding to Eguisheim and maybe Kaysersberg and Riquewihr too because there is a dedicated bike lane and a bike path connecting the towns. If the weather in Paris or amsterdam sucks, there is the option that we'd stay on the rhine and do Freiburg, Lucerne, Basel and fly out of Zurich instead. What's your opinion of that area of Switzerland? I also have Dijon and Beaune on my list because we're all into wine.
>>2724602>option that we'd stay on the rhine and do Freiburg, Lucerne, Basel and fly out of Zurich instead. What's your opinion of that area of Switzerland?I’m sort of biased because I live in Basel (and Switzerland is tiny and connected enough that Basel, Luzern, and Zürich are actually three quite different areas of the country, despite being under 90 minutes from one another by train). Basel has a mediocre reputation that it IMO doesn’t quite deserve, but I get where it comes from. I mark it extremely highly as a place to live, it’s great for museums (especially for art, but there are also some enjoyable oddballs like the Papiermühle paper museum, a beautifully restored medieval paper factory with cool exhibits on the region’s ancient history as a center for paper making and printing), and there are two tiny, attractive historical centers, but many people find it boring and/or ugly. Basel is honestly at its best in the summer, when you can swim in the Rhine and hang out at seasonal/pop-up bars and cafes along the riverside. There are a lot of small castles, some intact, some ruins, in the suburban villages of canton Basel-Land, just outside the city. Luzern too is at its best when the weather is fine and you can go out on the lake without shivering, but you can take the famous, wholeheartedly endorsed “Pilatus loop” year round—tram from the main train station to the foot of Mt. Pilatus, cable car/gondola to the mountaintop, world’s steepest cog railway/funicular down the other side, vintage steam ferryboat across the lake back to town. Luzern has one of urban Switzerland’s nicer city centers overall. Zürich is boring, but the Zoo is very good. A little city not far from Zürich that is IMO overlooked is Baden, known for its thermal springs and grand old spa hotels—they also have public bathtubs of hot mineral water in the streets; bring a bathing suit. Oh, and yes, Switzerland really is 2x the price of France, for much worse food.
>>2724679If you do decide to come to Switzerland and would rather go somewhere other than Luzern, Lake Thun in Canton Bern is a good choice—the little town of Thun itself is very pretty, and the whole lakeside (as well as those of the next lake over) is ringed with castles and an unusual concentration of thousand+ year old churches built by an insane Burgundian king who was visited by god in his dreams. Most of the castles are pretty poky and semi-ruined apart from the huge ones in Thun itself and in Oberhofen am Thunersee. Connected to one another by ferry, less than 90 minutes from Zürich by rail, and in the Oberland (highland/mountainous part of Canton Bern), to shut up everyone who likes to yell that the only reason anyone should ever visit Switzerland is for mountains.(Lack of mountains is, incidentally, another reason people don’t like Basel.)
>>2724686Thanks for all the help. I'm 99 percent sure we're not doing Switzerland anyway. But it's an option just in case the weather is atrocious up north.
>>2724696I’ll be surprised if there’s any huge difference in weather between here and parts north, but it does happen. The Netherlands are wetter than we (and a lot of other places) are, but temperatures are similar most of the time. Plus late September is often still pretty nice. I would never recommend skipping either Paris or Amsterdam in favor of Switzerland. Except for much (much!) better rail service and a little more cleanliness, there’s not much you can find here that you can’t get for a lot less money in one of our neighbors.
>>2724679>for much worse food.Switzerland is not Germany. The food is closer in quality to France and Italy. And they're world famous for their cheeses and wines.
>>2724854I am Swiss and live on the French and German borders. I agree that the cheese, wine, and chocolate are all world-leading, but anyone who comes to Switzerland for the cuisine has strange taste and is getting ripped off.
>>2724879Agreed. Swiss food is pretty mediocre. The best meals I ate in Switzerland were Italian, Indian and French restaurants.
>>2724879Yes in Basel sure the local food is lacking next to Alsatian specialties. But in Vaud, Valais, Fribourg or even Bern there is a long culinary tradition. Some people definitely come to Switzerland to enjoy a papet vaudois, a rösti, or obviously a raclette or fondue.
>>2725027I’m not arguing that Swiss food is inedible (and Basel is actually quite a good restaurant city as Swiss cities go, although apart from our takes on flour soup and maybe Läckerli we’re not known for many local culinary specialties), but “traditional/national” Swiss cooking anywhere in the country is pretty much all peasant food putting on airs and demanding incomprehensible markups. Heavy, simple/unrefined, basic, fairly bland. Even in the Romandie, where I will even concede that some things are marginally tastier than on our side of the Röstigraben. Don’t get me wrong; I love Raclette, but it’s literally just a plate of melted cheese garnished with pickles and potatoes. And I’m not personally into fondue, although my wife and one of my kids enjoy it, but I think the way it was invented as a national dish is sort of hilarious. It was once something starving mountain people did with stale bread crusts and old cheese scraps to survive the winter, and most people in most places in Switzerland never ate it before the 1950s-early 60s, after the cheesemakers’ association started pushing it as national culinary patrimony to shift a postwar cheese surplus. There’s plenty of stuff here that’s just fine to eat. But there isn’t a sensual gastronomic tradition. And the semi-mythological traditional line about superior quality ingredients (actually sometimes true in a few products, particularly meat and dairy, but not many and not always) doesn’t come close to justifying the prices.
>>2725075I tried fondue twice when I was in Switzerland last winter and it was pretty bland both times. One place was pretty high end (saycheese! in zermatt), and the other was a local joint. The price was outrageous at both restaurants. We had a $200 bill at saycheese.
>>2725075I'm a Frenchfag who lived in Lausanne for a few years and I agree. From my experience I would say that food in Switzerland is decent but not stellar either. You can tell that the Swiss are slightly less obsessed by food than we are, one of the things I noticed was the way lesser density of boulangeries. There are some delicious dishes like fondue, raclette, but they lack variety. Being a small country it isn't surprising, and it's somehow compensated by the quality of cheeses. I enjoyed the stuff that people eat on a daily basis slightly less than French food, especially dishes containing meat. Maybe I should've paid more to get the good stuff idk, but my experience with meat quality in Switzerland was quite disappointing. I still expect Swiss food to be way better than what people have in the USA. An regarding tourism, my take is to avoid spending too much time in the cities there (do check out a town or two for a day, just to know the architecture etc), and spend as much time as possible hiking and sightseeing in the mountains. Also if you want something authentic in September you can check out the "désalpes", where herds of cows are brought from the mountain pastures down into the valleys, there are festivities and shit. >>2725284Fondue is god tier though
>"I still expect Swiss food to be way better than what people have in the USA."You'd be very wrong to think that. The diversity and quality of food you can get in most US cities is staggering. European grocery stores in major cities are pitiful next to what you can get in any small city in the US. I have at least a dozen massive grocery stores within 10 miles of my house. It's super depressing to walk into a European grocery store and see like 4 vegetables and one type of cheese and nothing else. You can't even make a sandwich with what they have on the shelves. Then you walk over to the only other aisle and they have 1 type of laundry detergent and it smells like a god damned bottle of lavender perfume. Half the store is just candy you've never heard of. And then maybe there's another shelf of beer. That's the whole store. You have to make like 10 other stops to get what you need for the week.
>>2724854No. The grocery quality is better if you’re willing to pay accordingly, the whole “food culture” so to speak doesn’t hold a candle to France. The main type of eateries you’ll encounter randomly are kebab stands.
>>2725365Where does your European supermarket experience come from, Moldova?I live in a town of 1500 inhabitants in the countryside and we have 2 big + 1 small supermarkets, 2 boulangeries and other stuff like a butcher and cheesemongers. The small town 20 km away (17k inhabitants) has maybe 10 supermarkets - I didn't count.I also doubt about the quality of food, I've heard many Americans say that they felt much healthier after spending a month in Europe thanks to food, not being allergic to various stuff any more.
>>2725324>Maybe I should've paid more to get the good stuff idk, but my experience with meat quality in Switzerland was quite disappointing. I still expect Swiss food to be way better than what people have in the USA.Switzerland and the USA are actually sort of weirdly parallel on this specific issue (I have lived in both)—if you seek it out carefully and are willing to pay a premium, both Swiss and American meat are among the best in the world. Above the lowest price points, ingredient and restaurant standards in American coastal cities (and probably elsewhere too) are at least as high as anywhere in Europe, whatever people want to pretend. The mass-market/lower-end segments of the food economy are a lot more mixed, and the lower market segments are exponentially larger in the States than anywhere in Europe. But anyone who makes blanket statements about “USA FOOD BAD” or “EUROPE FOOD BETTER” is just ignorant, talking shit, or kidding themselves.
>>2725444CHeckedI tend to make comparisons based on what kind of food most people would eat on a daily basis, which is usually not the expensive high-quality stuff. But of course what a single person would experience depends a lot on how rich the person is, and how much they're willing to spend on a vacation trip.
>>2725450Europeans who come to the US are especially bad at picking out restaurants. They end up in Time' Square eating at places like Olive Garden and Margaritaville. I've noticed in other threads that people from Europe can't fathom that you can (and should) look up restaurants before you visit a city. It's your own fault when you fly 5,000 miles to eat at a Chile's and get the worst diarrhea of your life from eating the Southwestern Eggrolls.
>>2725365Most of that "food" that they have in the USA is carcinogenic slop. Filled with HGCS that will make you fat even if you don't overeat. Also it's pretty much the same few conglomerates disguising themselves with tons of different brand names. Not as diverse as you think it is.
>>2725788This is true, alot also are extremely poor compared to US prices and butthurt over paying a $5 tip so they end up at McDonald's every day.
>>2725791We’re already way off topic for OP, but I fucking hate these arguments. I concede that American processed food has a strange HFCS problem, but it’s easy to avoid if you minimize your consumption of processed/prepackaged shit. Corn syrup isn’t why Americans are obese, it’s just one of a constellation of bad choices a lot of Americans make. As for “most food” being “carcinogenic slop,” that’s just absurd—it’s probably based on an exaggerated idea of the range of food additives (around a dozen in relatively common use, all in the kinds of heavily processed foods that people everywhere should eat less of anyway) that are legal in the USA and not approved for use in Europe. Only a few of these are feared to be potential carcinogens. But even if they are, cancer rates in the US are quite similar to those in most of Europe on average, with different spikes. Americans have higher rates of cancers associated with being fat, Europeans have higher rates of cancers associated with smoking or being drunks. Both have lifestyle elements, neither can be clearly linked to a small number of chemicals.Finally, the consolidation of big agribusiness and food is a global phenomenon, not just an American one. Nestlé is the biggest food company in the world. Unilever owns hundreds of European brands. And most European countries are dominated by 3-5 supermarket chains each, some with tentacles in many countries (Carrefour, Tesco, Aldi, Lidl). Most people live closer to some kind of local market or bakery in Europe than the average Yank, sure, but a lot of them are still going to seek out whatever is cheapest and easiest, a lot of which is shit.European food is not magical. American food is not poison. It’s possible to eat well or to eat self-destructively in either. And the fact that more Yanks than Euros do the former is more complicated than people think.
>thread about a few specific European cities>40 replies in it's full of shart-in-marts frothing at the mouth about their hormone, pesticide and HFCS stuffed GMO slopThis will never be not funny.>NOOO YOU JUST HAVE TO SPEND 3 HOURS ON RESEARCH AND $300 ON TIPS TO GET SOMETHING THAT DOESNT TASTE LIKE POLYSTYRENE SEASONED WITH CHEETO DUSTFucking lmao.
>>2725365You're utterly deluded.
>>2725855Lmao, yuros seething that americans have access to grocery stores the size of football stadiums while yuros only food choice is which kebab stand or McDonald's to eat at bbbbut we have 20 grocery stores within walking distance where we can buy chips and ciggies , that's the vaunted yuro food scene
>>2725855This was what I was talking about when I said that Europeans can't fathom looking up places to eat, like it's this huge inconvenience to spend 30 seconds checking google or asking for a recommendation. It's not something you have to do in Kursk Russia where they have about 30 places to eat and they only serve beat soup and moldy bread. Rome and Chicago have roughly the same population, about 3 million people. They both also have the same number of restaurants, about 8000. If you go to Rome and eat at the first place you see, chances are it'll be a shitty tourist trap with terrible food and you'll get ripped off. You'd be retarded to just wing it at every meal. It's the same in Chicago. Now imagine New York city is triple the size of Rome with five times as many places to eat. You better google that shit or you're going to be real sad eating loaded tater tots at the Hard Rock cafe with rest of the lazy European tourists.
>>2725423Every city I've visited in Europe has nothing but these small, sad, SPAR markets. They are the saddest things you'll ever see as an American. God help you if you want something crazy like cinnamon, a yellow onion, or a pear. You'll have to wait until the farmer's market on Sunday or take the bus 100 miles away to the next grocery.
>>2725788I guess they want to try stuff that they don't have back at home, but stupidity might be a huge factor too
>>2726099>If you go to Rome and eat at the first place you see, chances are it'll be a shitty tourist trap with terrible food and you'll get ripped off.That's literally the opposite of truth, you assblasted baboon. Great food cities are known as such precisely because their median food quality is high and you'd have to actively self-sabotage to have a bad meal. This is why Kursk, Russia wouldn't become a gastronomic mecca even someone opened a 3-star restaurant there tomorrow. This is why people laugh at Londonfags who claim to be one, because your average nondescript Parisian bistrot utterly mogs most of their Instagram star chefs and trendy gastropubs foodwise.>New York city is triple the size of Rome with five times as many places to eatNobody cares how many fodder distribution stations your shithole has as longs as most of them serve street slop, goy slop and reheated Sysco slop. There's a reason why 90% of food-related discussions about New York revolve around pizza, hotdogs, bagels, deli grub and other snack-tier shit. NYC is a flyover's idea of gourmet city and dining at Planet Hollywood is unironically the most accurate representation of its food scene.
>>2725940My tiny local supermarket has more cheese variety than your whole McCity
>>2722743Brussels you get be done with in an afternoon. Go to Bruges, ghent, or Antwerp
>>2726107>Every city I've visited in Europe has nothing but these small, sad, SPAR markets.Where did you go?
>>2726183Lots of places in Europe don't even have Spar they just have some babushka selling beer, cigarettes, bananas and American cheese out of a tiny room on the ground floor of a commieblock that's why I always laugh when they say they have walkable cities
>>2726184That might be true in poorfag countries, but not in Western Europe. Especially American cheese kek
>>2726194That's the situation from the balkans to Japan, its really bizarre to only find American cheese, (which was actually invented by a German they just called it American to give it a hoity toity cachét)
>>2722743Your girlfriend is a faggot
>>2726177Have you been to Rome? There are literally hundreds of dogshit restaurants around the tourist attractions. You come off like a Russian who's never traveled.
>>2726179The problem is that your local grocery store ONLY sells cheese. I had to go on a Lord of the Rings sized quest to find the simplest items in Europe. You want toothpaste? You have to walk 3 miles to the pharmacy. You need a needle and thread? Maybe take a train to Rome and go to the garment district? You need a basketball? You could try flying to Barcelona and go to the only sporting goods store in western Europe.
>>2727998I've been to almost 50 countries and come to the conclusion that only America has supermarkets and only Americans cook their meals. Even highly advanced countries like japan or western Europe it's rare to find a supermarket larger than a 7-11 . Yes I know they exist but most people subsist on tiny shops and cooked food
>>2727998>>2728019I can go to my tiny local supermarket in my little European town and buy cheese, toothpaste, needle and thread, basketball, cat food, condoms, ready made food, frozen food, fresh meat. What are you talking about?
>>2728108Why lie?
>>2727998No that would be one of the two cheesemongers that work in my village of 2.5k souls, the supermarkets are very decently stocked. That's what happens when you don't have 75% of your workforce being senior deputy happiness managers or other bullshit jobs.
>>2728614I have no dog in this fight, but the average American grocery store is about five times as large as most European grocery stores. Those Costco's they have are like half the size of the city of Toledo Spain.
>>2723209What parts did I miss in Brussels? I stayed in Grand Place and didn't make it too far away from it. The train from the airport stopped at a bunch of shady as fuck spots. I ended up taking the Eurostar to Amsterdam and the surroundings got noticeably nicer once I got to the Netherlands border.
>>2728889>>2722743I did a loop, Brussels to Ghent to Bruges to Antwerp to Brussels, then to Amsterdam. Ghent I found to be forgettable but it was a welcome respite from the city full of gypsies bothering me while I drank beer. I didn't find Bruges as touristy as people made it out to be, although I didn't do any of the normal things. Went to De Garre which is sort of hidden away and had fun drinking 11% triples. Antwerp was ok, I'd probably like it more if I were into fashion.
>>2728167Why be lactose intolerant?
