Day 2 - Eat, eat, eat, drink, eat, drink
Today I’ve been a very busy girl.
After having.a very disturbed night - my room is right near the stairs so Ihead everyone who lived on the 3rd floor come in and some didn’t come home until 4 in the morning - after that though, bliss and I managed to get some sleep. I will have to route through my bags for the earplugs tonight!
The good thing was that as they were all so late getting home they didn’t get up early so I was able to nab a hot shower before the rest used up all the hot water, which I’ve learnt happens frequently!
This morning started cloudy but had promise of brightening up and being a hot day. So donned a skirt and shivered for the first hour but after that - lovely. The day started with finding a little cafe (sorry bistro) on the Markt (no I haven’t forgotten the ‘e’) and had a nice breakfast - though tomorrow I think I’ll go for the small version.
Joined up, at 11.30 (hence eating on the Markt) with a walking tour. I was given a dilemma though should I do the historical tour or the food and drink one - well guess which one I chose! Whilst waiting for the tour to start ,got talking to some Aussie guys who only happened to be staying at the same hostel - how about that!. The tour went like this:
Walk to a chip museum - eat chips (Belgians invented the fries apparently not the yankies - as they would have us believe. They started with some Belgian sailors who couldn’t catch any fish so they decided to fry potatoes instead and hey presto - the chip.
Walk to the chocolate museum - eat chocolate. The Belgians invented making sweets out of cholcolate (are you getting the gist of this yet?) although they will admit to not discovering chocolate as the Italians were drinking it before they (the belgians) solidified it into lovely little chocolatey lumps.
Walk to the waffle van - eat waffles and guess what ........ the Belgian invented the waffle!! At this point I did have to say to Nick (our guide) ‘Did you lot invent everything’
Walk to a praline shop - eat pralines. Surprise, surprise these were invented by a Belgian doctor who couldn’t get his kids to take drugs, so he wrapped them in chocolate (who would have him as a father!), then he thought it would be a good idea to wrap other stuff (more delicious than drugs) in chocolate voila pralines were invented.
Went to a local brewery - drank beer, at which point me, the Aussie boys and an English couple from Essex decided that was a good place to stay and drink more beer.
One of my ‘must dos’ for this trip was to hire a bike and do the circular bike ride around Bruges town, so this afternoon I did just that. Cycles are the king/queen here, everything has to give way to the good old bike, you can even go up a one way street the wrong way and no one minds. Although it does take a while to get used to cycling on huge cobbles. There were some wonderful sights, see picture below.
Before going out for some dinner, as I’d been cycling in the hot sun thought I should have a shower - not a drop of hot water! After a cold sloosh down I wandered around and found a lovely little local place and had the famous Flemish stew. However, it does mystify me that they serve everything with salad and chips - stew was gorg though. End of day 2.
After having.a very disturbed night - my room is right near the stairs so Ihead everyone who lived on the 3rd floor come in and some didn’t come home until 4 in the morning - after that though, bliss and I managed to get some sleep. I will have to route through my bags for the earplugs tonight!
The good thing was that as they were all so late getting home they didn’t get up early so I was able to nab a hot shower before the rest used up all the hot water, which I’ve learnt happens frequently!
This morning started cloudy but had promise of brightening up and being a hot day. So donned a skirt and shivered for the first hour but after that - lovely. The day started with finding a little cafe (sorry bistro) on the Markt (no I haven’t forgotten the ‘e’) and had a nice breakfast - though tomorrow I think I’ll go for the small version.
Joined up, at 11.30 (hence eating on the Markt) with a walking tour. I was given a dilemma though should I do the historical tour or the food and drink one - well guess which one I chose! Whilst waiting for the tour to start ,got talking to some Aussie guys who only happened to be staying at the same hostel - how about that!. The tour went like this:
Walk to a chip museum - eat chips (Belgians invented the fries apparently not the yankies - as they would have us believe. They started with some Belgian sailors who couldn’t catch any fish so they decided to fry potatoes instead and hey presto - the chip.
Walk to the chocolate museum - eat chocolate. The Belgians invented making sweets out of cholcolate (are you getting the gist of this yet?) although they will admit to not discovering chocolate as the Italians were drinking it before they (the belgians) solidified it into lovely little chocolatey lumps.
Walk to the waffle van - eat waffles and guess what ........ the Belgian invented the waffle!! At this point I did have to say to Nick (our guide) ‘Did you lot invent everything’
Walk to a praline shop - eat pralines. Surprise, surprise these were invented by a Belgian doctor who couldn’t get his kids to take drugs, so he wrapped them in chocolate (who would have him as a father!), then he thought it would be a good idea to wrap other stuff (more delicious than drugs) in chocolate voila pralines were invented.
Went to a local brewery - drank beer, at which point me, the Aussie boys and an English couple from Essex decided that was a good place to stay and drink more beer.
One of my ‘must dos’ for this trip was to hire a bike and do the circular bike ride around Bruges town, so this afternoon I did just that. Cycles are the king/queen here, everything has to give way to the good old bike, you can even go up a one way street the wrong way and no one minds. Although it does take a while to get used to cycling on huge cobbles. There were some wonderful sights, see picture below.
Before going out for some dinner, as I’d been cycling in the hot sun thought I should have a shower - not a drop of hot water! After a cold sloosh down I wandered around and found a lovely little local place and had the famous Flemish stew. However, it does mystify me that they serve everything with salad and chips - stew was gorg though. End of day 2.
Could be worse... will be cabbage soon enough!
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