Brugge, May 15

Sunday we headed an hour north via train to Bruges. We were slow going in the morning so we didn't make it out of the house until near noon and with a bus trip and train ride we arrived at about 2pm.

The great thing about Bruges is that it is small and adorable. This meant we didn't bother with a map, well really we didn't bother with a map and tourist info because the tourist office at the train station closed at 2pm on Sunday. As such we just wandered around the town. It is adorable! Think a touristy version of Belgium, but not really in a bad way. Because it was quite touristy things were a little more expensive, like eating. We walked around for quite some time trying to find somewhere to sit and eat before eventually settling with Subway. I had a meatball sub because it is so filling for the small price you pay. Funny though, no one must ever order meatball subs because they had to bring the meatballs out from the back frozen then microwave them. Ha. Not really the most appetizing, especially because when we did get our subs some of the meatballs were still a little frozen.

After lunch our only goal was to see the town, eat a waffle, and buy chocolates.

Bruges is a good town for wandering, there are tons of cute streets attached to other cute streets that leads you to a canal where you can see old churches and castle like buildings.

Eventually when our appetite returned enough to justify eating a waffle and getting a coffee we walked back to a place we had seen previously. It purported to have the best hot chocolate and fresh home made waffles. Really, you can't go wrong. That is the wonderful thing about Belgium, even if the chocolate isn't the highest quality it is still delicious! I'm not normally a huge chocolate fan, not that I dislike it, I'm just not really drawn to it, but there it is so delicious.

So we both ordered a hot chocolate, I got dark chocolate, we also both ordered a waffle with just sugar. All of this is served with a tray of chocolates and cookies.

The hot chocolate was a real wonder. And the sign did not lie, it was in fact the best hot chocolate I had ever had. They serve you a large bowl sized mug of hot milk with a whisk. Then this is accompanied by a chocolate cup full of chocolate chips. Basically you dump the chocolate cup into your hot milk and whisk it until it becomes a delectable chocolaty concoction. It was divine. The waffle wasn't the regular fluffy variety, it was quite thin and covered an entire plate, this was covered with powdered sugar and served with white and brown sugar. Naturally all this was put on top of the waffle before consuming it. Sugar high is an understatement. I think I made out pretty well though because I felt wonderful afterwards.

From there we did some more walking and perusing of chocolate shops, which are literally everywhere. We came across a fair like set up, which must be popular this time of year because we saw rides and games like that in Brussels as well and there is one set up in the main square in Groningen this week too.

Being a Sunday not too much was open so we did a little window shopping before finding a chocolate shop we could commit to buying things from. I walked away with quite a bit, so family be prepared.

We walked on and spotted a bar that shows off a hundreds of different types of Belgian beers. We stopped for a pint. I really enjoy the glasses they serve them out of. Each beer has a very specific cup for it to be served out of and a lot of them take on the shape of a chalice or goblet. It is nice. The sitting area overlooked part of the canal in town. It was nice to sit and relax.

After beers we headed back to the train. It was quite late but we didn't need to get anything to eat because Lily said she'd have dinner waiting for us. We made our way through a lovely park in Bruges, found the train, then caught the bus and showed up to some fresh spaghetti. We didn't think we were hungry until we sat down with food in front of us. It was so tasty. That was followed by a banana milk shake. Ha, we were like lost kids being stuffed full.

After dinner we watched 'Wolf Creek' which is a horror movie based on a true story about a serial killer in Australia who kills backpackers. This might make more sense if I tell you that Tess knows Lily and Fabrice from when they were backpacking through Australia for 6 months and met Tess' family and subsequently stayed with them for some time. So Australia was their connection. I have to admit that I only watched the first part of the film before tuning it out because it was so disgusting and unnecessary, but I'm biased by my blind, unconditional hatred of scary movies.