Bonjour! Dag! Hallo! Hello!
Oh the many languages spoken in Bruges,we must cater for them all!
If you havent guessed or dont already know, I went to Bruges this weekend! I spent the weekend eating naughty food, drinking beer and wine and laughing ALOT with my pal Jenny P and our favourite inflatable travelling companion Mario!
We went on the Ferry from Hull to Zeebrugge with P&O, I'd never been on a ferry so it was extra exciting for me! Although it is expensive on board, you dont pay alot for the travel so I guess thats how P&O make their money. The food in the Brasserie was nice, not a huge choice but we managed a couple of courses and we washed it down with some prosecco so we were happy campers!
We arrived in Bruges at about 10:00am and ended up walking from one end to the other with our suitcases, not really knowing where we were going but it was lovely to explore a little whilst looking for our hostel. One of the things we noticed were lots of faces on buildings and the rooftops were all different, the sun was shining for a while and we managed to find our hostel with the help of a map and in about 20 mins!
Jen wanted to take a trip up the Belfry and I wanted to explore the streets a bit more and have a little wander so we split off for an hour or so and just enjoyed the surroundings.
The Belfry tower is in the Markt, this square is where you can find horse and carriage tours, Segway tours, lots of people taking photos aswell as the Historium (which also houses the Duvel bar)
We didn't go around the Historium, instead we headed straight to the bar (obviously)
Duvelorium Grand Beer Café
The room is pretty amazing, I really enjoyed taking photographs of the stained glass and the Duvel walls at either end of the room. There was also a chandellier made up of Duvel bottles.
I dont actually like Duvel so I had a Liefmans Kreik and sat overlooking the Markt.
We headed down one of the streets off the Markt and went in the hunt of some food. Food seemed pretty expensive in Bruges, and the Beer seemed pretty cheap, we know your game, Bruges!
We parked up in a lovely cafe/restaurant (They call all their restaurants Tea Rooms) and tucked into a croque monsuier and some frites and mayonnaise (It would be rude not to in Belgium) There was a lovely little court yard out the back and a big bird cage with 3 birds singing in the window!
We also came across a bar next to the fish market where we ordered a white wine and a BelleVue Kriek and is only cost 5 euros! We met a chap in there who told us to try the Westmalle Triple and advised us that it is the best, he also told us he speaks 5 languages, which triggered off a bit of a conversation about how lazy we are in England in general about learning other languages. We met another guy later on who told us he knew a bit of Russian but when we challenged him on that it turned out he just knew how to say "hello, how are you" etc Liar!
After a freshen up and a costume change at the hostel we headed over to the St Anna Windmills These windmills were where cereal grains were ground for flour originally, 2 are museums and the others you cant go inside but they are interesting to look at!
The picture above was a sign outside this small cafe/bar which we stumbled across on our travels back towards the main square, I loved it so much, it basically says "If we're open, we're open, if not then tough" They had some nice wine and Jenny and I propped ourselves up at the bar and enjoyed an intelligent conversation about life and other worldly things (Thats a lie, we actually talked about our weirdest celebrity crushes because we are girls and thats what we do over a glass of wine!)
Lovely little spot though!
The rest of the evening we bar hopped and went to a little restaurant for dinner, I ate Steak and Jenny had a Femish Stew. Amazing chunk of meat covered in garlic and herb butter and accompanied by chips (we had chips twice in one day, dont judge we were on annual leave!)
On the second day our first mission was to find the Chocolate Line, Jens guide book said it was the best, and we wanted the best! When we walked into the shop the smell was heavenly, absolutely divine! You could see right through into the kitchens where they were making the chocolate aswell!
www.thechocolateline.be I bought a couple of gifts in there, they were also selling a book called shock-o-latier by Dominique Persoone (He founded the chocolate line in 1992) - he is famous for stuffing chocolate with tobacco leaves and wasabi amoungst other ingredients!
After this, we headed down the street to a cafe and ordered hot chocolate in a tea room. The tea room was gorgeous, and the hot chocolate came as a massive bowl of milk a chocolate cup and chocolate buttons, you could choose which chocolate you wanted, I went for the 60% Dark chocolate and Jen had the Milk Chocolate, both were delicious
Felt a bit sick after this so decided to walk it off and when we felt like we had room again we got on the Kreik and Brugge Fromage, as you do!
There is so much to see, even just walking around all the buildings are different and they are all so interesting! I managed to get a few photos of some letterboxes to add to my collection, I love them!
We ate and drank our way around pretty easily and really enjoyed a few days getting away from lifes routines! - All i can say now is, I NEED FRUIT!
Cheers!
