Photo story: Backpacksandkayaks and their impressions of Brussels!

We love to hear from visitors who enjoy Brussels and Sem & Noortje from the Netherlands were kind enough to send us their impressions and beautiful photos that they took during their stay here. Enjoy reading their story and follow more of their adventures on Instagram!

We are Sem (23) and Noortje (24) and we live in the small but beautiful city of Nijmegen in the Netherlands. At the moment we are in the very last year of our studies (Sem in the management sector and Noortje in the environmental sector). We have been together for almost four years and we have already seen a lot of the world together as we both love travelling more than anything else. Since we love taking pictures and videos of the places we have been to, we were looking for a fun and interactive way to share them. And like that, our Instagram account @backpacksandkayaks was born at the end of July. We have an endless bucket-list of all the places we want to go to, but also like to emphasize on the fact that we do not need to travel to the other side of the world to find beautiful places, since our own country and the ones nearby us, like Belgium, are amazing too!

We went to Brussels for the first time last week, especially since we saw pictures of the Royal Greenhouses of Laeken on Instagram and HAD to take pictures there ourselves. Once we got there, standing in front of the closed gates, we realized it was only open in spring. We should really learn to check some information websites before we go somewhere 😉

Nevertheless, Brussels amazed us. It is so photogenic, symmetrical (we love that), the vibe is great and the Belgium fries are definitely better than the Dutch ones. We spent three full days in Brussels and still did not have enough time to see all the beautiful sites in the city centre, even though we woke up at 6:00 to take pictures without hundreds of people in each shot. The only thing that we would change about this city is the amount of days that the Greenhouses of Laeken are open! But on the other hand, we do have a really good reason to come back to Brussels! 🙂