For our last day in Europe, we decided to drive to Belgium since neither of us had ever been there and it was only a couple hours away. We were going to go to Brussels, but our friend Everton said we should check out Brugge instead.
So we drove for about three hours and found Brugge!
First stop, pastry shop! Of course. And we had one of those raspberry tarts you can see in the back there and it was seriously amazing. One of the best pastries I have ever had.
Here is a “Berliner” – and it is not a jelly donut, it is just a donut. In case you were wondering. These ones had crème in them.
So Brugge is famous for these beautiful little rows of buildings with the pointed roofs. I LOVED it. So fun to walk around a bunch of narrow streets with beautiful buildings.
Here is the square where there are lots of shops, a church, some restaurants, and a bell tower that you can see behind Chris.
Belgium is famous for lace – I love nice lace, so I went and checked out the lace shop where we bought our girls little lace parasols that were SO pretty.
We decided to climb the bell tower. The bell tower used to house all the important city documents, in a large trunk, behind a gate, and there were six locks on each.
The mayor and five city council members each had unique keys, so no one could get into the documents without everyone being present. They used to hold their meetings in the bell tower.
I thought this info on the bells was SUPER interesting, but didn’t want to type it all, so if you are interested you can read it! Most interesting to me though was the part about uniform bell ringing changed people’s perception of time since it made time a uniform measurement. Hmm… think how different our lives would be without a uniform measure of time!
Climbing up, up, up! Very narrow stone stairs. Made one get a little dizzy near the top.
Here is the drum where the music is programmed. They change the music every few years, so they have to take out the little pegs and put them in new places to make a new song.
Beautiful view of the city from the top.
Chris was looking very sophisticated in his glasses – what? You didn’t know Chris wears glasses?
Here is a painting in a church that was being restored. I just thought it was interesting to see how they cover up the parts that haven’t been restored yet. Then they can uncover just little bits at a time to work on.
Those are loaves of nougat. Yum. In all different flavors. I have never seen anything like it and it all looked delicious. There were the best candy shops in this town!
Those are meter long marshmallows. Because who doesn’t want to eat a meter long marshmallow????
There is a river that runs around the city, so it was nice to walk near the river and enjoy the scenery there.
Belgium is also known for chocolate, so there were tons of chocolate stores, and of course we bought some delicious chocolate to take home. YUM!
I saw this dress in one of the lace shops. It is so cute, maybe I will have to try and duplicate it if I can ever find lace like that!
After several attempts, we got a picture of us together!
These are wooden cookie cutters to make little sugar cookies. They are so cute. We bought the windmill one, now we just have to find a recipe to make “spekuloos” – which is the name of the cookies that are usually made with these cookie cutters.
This is the town hall.
More beautiful buildings. It was cold and raining outside, but I didn’t mind too much because this was a really beautiful city to just wander around in. We looked for the chocolate museum, but showed up just as it closed – only to realize it is the SAME chocolate museum we went to in Prague. So funny, I didn’t know there were chocolate museum chains…
There are boat tours of the city and I thought it was so funny how many people just got out umbrellas and went for boat rides in the rain. I guess that was easier for them than walking around the city!
Here is Chris neighing at me. He is making a pretty awesome face…
We wandered around looking for a good restaurant and ended up at an Italian place. When in doubt, go Italian – most of the names are the same as in America and the food is usually pretty good. This place was great though because it was owned by a little family. There was a girl a little older than Elora doing her geography homework, a little boy about Marion’s age just wandering around the restaurant, and a teenage boy was our waiter while the dad cooked and the mom helped too. It was so fun to watch them all work together.
After dinner we went to a little café close by to get a Belgium waffle. We almost didn’t, but while walking around during the day we had seen some awesome waffles and I really wanted to get one before we left. BEST decision EVER. This was seriously the most awesome tasting food I have ever eaten, and I don’t usually love waffles. The chocolate sauce was dark chocolate of really good quality. Oh my, if I had only known I would have eaten waffles ALL DAY. Yum. If I ever go back to Belgium, it will be for the waffles.
On the way back to our car we saw this kebab shop, and I thought it was the most awesome looking kebab shop I have ever seen. Such nice architecture… but still with the loud signs and neon lights. This was such a fun trip, it was totally worth the drive.
