In Bruges

We have left France and on our way to our next month long stop we took a small detour to Bruges.

 

Bruges is so pretty and resembles a town from a fairytale with attractive cobbled streets, charming canals and beautiful medieval architecture its hard not to love it. It was cold when we were there -2 degrees C and despite our thermals and scarves we still felt the chill – this didn’t put us off though, we happily warmed ourselves up with some of the best hot chocolate I have ever tasted. Warm milk in a tall mug with a slab of delicious Belgium chocolate to stir in, delicious!

 

 

We hopped on a boat to see the sights from the canal an at around 8 Euros each for 30 min tour, it was well worth the money. The boat driver speaks 3 languages (French, English and Dutch) and was full of information about the sights we passed. I have to admit though that I could not understand most of what he said as it was all muffled through the microphone but Chris said he picked up enough of the information just fine.

After the canal tour we popped in to a very fancy hotel called ‘Hotel De Tuilerieën’ to warm up in their cosy bar with open fire. Chris and I enjoyed and Ameretto Coffee and Eliza moved onto her second hot chocolate of the day.

Whilst walking around we spotted as many lace shops as there were chocolate shops, not being interested in lace we stuck to the chocolatiers. It’ll be no surprise that the chocolates were definetly Elizas favourite thing about our weekend here. That and the bubble man that  we spotted one evening outside the Basilica holy blood  in the historic square. He  had 2 sticks with ropes between them and would dip the rope into the bubble solution then wave it around and hundreds of different sized bubbles would appear and float about. The kids were running around and popping them, the square was full of laughter and it looked magical.

Speaking of the Basilica holy blood – we did pop in. It was free and we were curious. They claim to have a vile of Jesus Christ’s blood. Me and Eliza got up close to take a peak and I can confirm…. it looks like blood. The inside of the church is beautiful, very colourful but the shushy lady is a bit of a killjoy. She shushed anyone who dared whisper near the blood, ironically she was the loudest thing in there.

Oh i can’t end witout mentioning the food. We had one of the best meals we have ever had in a restaurant called ‘Au petit grand’. We had a four course meal with cava to start and red wine with the rest of the courses, main was a juicy thick steak – it was delicious and they even catered for Eliza, she said she had the best pesto spaghetti she had ever tatsed. And if you are visiting Bruges, make sure you try at least one dark beer – you won’t regret it.