After our overnight road trip from England, through the Chunnel, through France and into Belgium, we finally arrived in Bruges at about 8am. The streets were quiet, the sun was shining and our mission was to find a car charger as we were getting dangerously low. This turned out to be a frustrating experience that would be repeated throughout the trip - why they won't standardize chargers the way petrol stations are (show up, swipe credit card, get what you want) I will never understand.
To make a long and boring story short, we finally charged the car and found a hotel that would let us check in at 10am so we could finally get some sleep. We slept until about 2pm, then it was up and at 'em to go explore Bruges for the day! Of course, before coming here, we re-watched the movie In Bruges so it was really fun to spot all the places where the movie was filmed.
The hotel we stayed at was the Ibis by the train station, and it was a short walk to the city center. Our first mission was to find food, more specifically, waffles and fries! We found both right next to each other in a very picturesque spot. For waffles, we went to the Otto Waffle Attelier and got the Crispy Cacao (left) and the Chocolate Lady (right) to share between the three of us.
As you might have guessed, it was delicious! After we devoured the waffles it was time for some frites from the Frit Bar right next door. Somehow I didn't take a picture of the menu, but these were a specialty recommended by the person on the till. It was some kind of slow-cooked meat stew that turned into almost gravy, then topped with a creamy sauce and plenty of spices. The fries were crispy even under all those toppings and the meat melted in my mouth. At €15 it wasn't cheap, but it was worth every penny!
After stuffing our faces we hopped on the first canal tour we spotted (which turned out to be a good move here, not so much in Amsterdam, more on that later.) The boat was nice and small which meant every seat had a fantastic view, and our guide was very knowledgeable and funny. It was interesting to hear him repeat a joke three times in three different languages and hear a different section of the boat laugh each time. I snapped a lot of pictures of beautiful old buildings, but this is the hotel from the movie, so I'll just share that one.
After 30 minutes on a boat ride, we were still hungry so Steve talked us into trying various fried meat concoctions that are regional delights. I was not delighted. I forget what the one on the left is called, but the one on the right is bitterballen - which was prevalent in Belgium and in The Netherlands. Steve first described it as a fried meatball, which sound delicious, but when I bit into it the texture was not at all what I was expecting. It was more like fried meat mush and, well, it's not for me.
After that, Joel couldn't resist some pistachio gelato... (neither could Steve, apparently...)
But I was holding out for Belgian chocolate! Every piece in this store window was an absolute work of art. We let the sales lady pick out her favourites and got a bag of 10 to share. We took our time eating them over the next few days and in the end, wished we had bought more! I'm not that big of a chocolate fan (I prefer my chocolate in cake or cookies) but these were truly amazing.
From there we kept wandering and finding more food-related things to do. Like this marzipan shop where Joel splurged on four different kinds of marzipan to bring home.
We also found a McDonald's so of course we had to get some to continue our McDonald's around the world series! But that will be a separate post.
Lest I leave you thinking that all we did in Bruges was walk and eat, well, that is most of what we did. But we also looked at a lot of really cool old buildings. We really wanted to climb the bell tower that is featured in the movie, but alas, they were sold out of tickets for the day. But really, this turned out to be for the best, as we found a building across the way that we could go up, and it gave us amazing views of the bell tower that we wouldn't have if we were inside the bell tower. Plus it was cheaper!
Here is the bird's eye view of the city center. See if you can spot Joel in the picture!
After that, we walked around more, admired more canals...
Found some excellent free places to fill up our water bottles...
And of course, ate more frites. These were good, but not nearly as good as the first batch.
We had one last stop to make before going back to our hotel for the night. In the movie, they make a big deal out of "Koningin Astridpark" - describing it as a beautiful park with many alcoves. We had to wander quite a bit to find it, and were disappointed that there were exactly zero alcoves! But there was this lovely statue of Koningin Astrid. She was a princess of Sweden who married King Leopold III and was, for a very brief time (23 February 1934 – 29 August 1935) Queen of the Belgians. She died in a car accident just a few months before her 30th birthday. You can learn more about her here.
The park itself was very beautiful and still well worth a visit. After that, we made our way back to our hotel to collapse for the night. We had been running on about 4 hours of sleep and logged more than 20,000 steps! The next day we would be up bright and early to head to Amsterdam to meet up with my parents. More on that soon!
XOXO, Bethany