Traveling Sophie: Leuven, Part 1!

Today, I went to one of my favorite cities, called Leuven.The city lies in the Flemish speaking part of Flanders, In Brabant & is the capital city of Brabant. Is is about 35 min by train from where I live. Leuven is very well-known for its international Catholic University, In Dutch: ( KUL )= Katholieke Universiteit Leuven! It is one of the oldest Universities of the Low-Lands. Leuven is also famous for their brewerie, Stella Artois!! Leuven is also a great foodie destination for me & has many cool foodie restaurants, foodie shops & places where also vegetarian eating is possible. You just have to find them! I also like the variety of many tiny, some larger & cool clothing, flower shops, etc!

Here a few impressions of my afternoon there:

The Bondgenotenlaan, with in the end, the beautiful prestigious Town Hall!

Mok Leuven in Diestsestraat.This is a tiny Micro-roasterie since 1992 & a coffee bar too! I have yet to discover this cool tiny coffee bar! ;)

First, I went to the famous IMS-Store, situated in the Diestsestraat 131, 3000 Leuven. This is a large Internationally Magazine Store, hence the name: IMS! This large shop sells an enormous sort of different international magazines. In total, they sell more then 10.000 titles! These IMS-stores are situated in many larger Belgian cities, like in Leuven or in Hasselt, Antwerp, etc. You can get more than 75 culinary magazines , the one more expensive then the other with names, like, Saveur, Donna Hay magazine, Olive, Delicious-magazine,…You can read them of my pictures! See below!

The Culinary department! Already 37 different internationally culinary magazines! Do you know a few of them?

And even more,…

And even more,…:)

Which one’s of them, do you read? Often, when I visit the IMS-store, I buy the Vegetarian Living, a Uk based monthly, vegetarian & vegan food magazine. It is a really good one. Often, I also buy another Uk-based vegetarian monthly magazine, called Cook Vegetarian. I have an IMS-card, with that card, I get 10 to 12% money reduction on Uk based magazines. It is worth it, you know. I got more than 1€ off per magazine. So, it was more than 2€ less then without a card. You can use your card in any IMS-shop, also in Breda, The Netherlands! ;)

So, if you are in the area, you should visit this cool store. They also sell more than 6 yoga magazine! Yes, yes! :)

3 cool yoga magazines!

After buying, my 2 cool vegetarian cookery magazines, I wanted to go to my lovely Bookstore called : ” De Dry Coppen “, translated: ” The 3 mugs “ This cool & cosy bookstore sells Dutch literature, Dutch Poems & also other cool books about all cool things in life & real art books too. There is also a top floor where the cooking books are. But they don’t sell the cookery books I long for. They are also a coffee bar! So they like to call themself a Book cafe! Here are a few pictures to lure you all in,…

Cool, hey?

Tasty desserts!
Not Vegan though!

Yummy hot & cold drinks to drink! :) Now, how to choose?

You can borrow the books & read them while you enjoy from your daily cafe latte but if you damage them, you must buy them, okay? On the menu board, its isn’t mentioned, but you can replace the cow’s milk with soy milk, but it is an added cost of 0.30€ cent. The first hot drink, I tried was the normal Latte macchiato with soy milk. It costed me 3.30€. I received it in a larger see through glass & they serve alongside your coffee, a lovely individual wrapped praline. Yum Yum Yummm! The praline is not vegan!!! ;) See for yourself, how good is looks:

Yummm! A lovely Latte Macchiato with soy milk! The praline looks tasty too, hey?

The coffee is really good, intense but not too strong. Lovely, lovely, I say! This is my favorite book café. There is always good music on, in the background & they have an international clientèle. A few other pics:

Then, I ordered another tasty coffee, called Coffee Nocciolato, a coffee with on the bottom hazelnut syrup, then hot steamed soy milk, some chocolate, then hot coffee, topped with soy foam & smaller bresilienne nut pieces,…Yum Yum, It costed me: 3.80€, just see for yourself:

Relaxed reading & sipping from a special coffee at the same time! :)

Yum,… Beautiful!!! You see?

All the coffee, they use here is from The Dutch coffee roasterie & tea house called: Blanche Dael. They exist since 1878! That company is based in Maastricht, The Netherlands. Their coffee is really good! MMM,…:)

Adresse?

De Dry Coppen, Schrijnmakersstraat 11, 3000 Leuven

So, my friends, I hope you enjoyed this post! This will be the end of part 1: Traveling Sophie! More posts to follow later in the week! :) See you all then! xxx

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