This is a beautiful country with a rich history. Many of the sites we visited were as old as 900AD, with lots of medieval history it was a land of kings and queens, knights and paupers. The country played key roles in the Napoleonic wars, world war one, and two and many others. The landscape as well as the cities of Bruges and Brussels devistated by battle but recovered beautifully just like the people here.
Brussles is the center of poliitcs for europe, the parliment for the European Union is here, which makes the city very cosmopolitan, with modern buildings and services surrounding buildings from the 1400's.
We noted on more than one occassion the number of people who smoke here, probably more than any other large center in Europe. They allow for outdoor smoking at cafe's and bars, but not in the buildings.
Getting around the country is easy, the train system is efficient and the trains are clean. The three cities / towns we visited, Bruges, Brussels and Gent are easy to walk, very flat so no big hills to climb even the difference between what they consider a upper town to lower town is not that much of an up hill walk.
Belgium is proud of the food that they are famous for, and in general its all good. The french fries (invented here), the waffles, the beer and the chocolate are all great and can be found everwhere. There are as many chocolate shops here as we have Tim Hortons, actually there may be more chocolate shops. French fries are served with everything, our first night in Bruges we had mussels served with french fries of course??
The temperatures ran from 8 degrees C in the morning to about 22 degrees in the afternoon, we had mainly cloudy days, with a few rainy days and a few sunny days intermixed. I would say that the weather here is very much like our weather at home in mid fall.