Mechelen Shopping

What to buy: There are two essential purchases in my view on any visit to Belgium – beer and chocolate. Luckily in Mechelen you can find both within a few steps from the Grote Markt. On its south side you have a choice of three excellent chocolate shops: Leonidas, Neuhaus and Godiva. All looked to have a great selection. We went first to Leonidas where my friend bought a small bag of chocolates but I resisted – we have a branch of Leonidas in Ealing so it doesn’t feel like proper holiday shopping to buy my chocolates there! But in Neuhaus I found everything I was looking for – a box of rich chocolate squares for colleagues at work, a bag of candied orange peel strips coated in dark chocolate for Chris and me to share at home, and a selection of individual chocolates from which to pick just 2 for us to enjoy straight away :)

Not far away opposite the cathedral we found a tourist-orientated shop that seemed to sell almost every beer brewed in Belgium! Actually that isn’t the case, as I couldn’t find a bottle of the local Margriet I’d enjoyed a couple of evenings earlier, but there was certainly a great selection, from which I chose this bottle of Trappist beer, Rochefort, to bring back for Chris – you can tell by the fact that my photo is of an empty bottle that it was a popular gift!

What to pay: Chocolates here aren’t cheap but they are worth every penny, in my view, as a little of this dark richness goes a long way. I paid € 15 for the box of chocolate squares, for instance. The beer was one of the dearer ones in the shop at € 4.50, but you could get a decent one for about half that.