This early in the morning, nobody is awake yet. All the locals are getting ready for church, and all the tourists are still in bed, or eating breakfast at their hotels. Josh and I were SO NOT going to eat at our hotel. It would have been 14 euros per person for a basic continental breakfast. No thank you. Instead, our mission was to find a nice little cafe, to have some coffee and a sugar waffle. Everyone knows waffles are famous in Belgium, and I really really wanted to have a cappuccino or latte or something fancy. Coffee just seems like such a grown-up, classy thing to like. I still feel so much like a kid sometimes (which I'm not complaining about) but I also want to do "grown-up" things. (But only the fun grown-up things - like go to bars, drink coffee, tattoos, etc.) Unfortunately, I would rather lick a monkey's butt than drink a cup of black coffee. But I was determined to fake my grown-upedness, and drink some dang coffee.
Before we went in search of a cafe, we rambled thru the southern end of town, near the hotel.
We went to Minnewater Lake Park. It was just us and a few lone joggers out. Other than that, it was dead quiet. SO much nicer than Saturday, with the hordes of people.
After terrorizing the ducks & swans in the area, we went on to the Beguinage.
Make sure you click on the Minnewater & Beguinage hyperlinks - it'll give you good info on the sites.
Anyway, I really loved the Beguinage. Talk about seclusion & peace.
By this point, it's creeping on 9am, and we still haven't found a cafe. So...we keep on walking'. It's so nice how empty the city is, even past 8am. We took full advantage of it.
Since we can't find any cafes that are open, we decide to check on the canal tours. It's not raining, and we figure we can get on the first boat. We walk to the canal tour operator (one of several in the city). The first boat is at 10am. It's 9:15. Wait a minute. What's this next door to the canal tour ticket booth? A COFFEE SHOP THAT ALSO SERVES SUGAR WAFFLES!!
Not only did I get a cappuccino, but I finished the whole thing. And, it wasn't the worst thing in the world!!
On to the canal tour. The previously empty streets were now starting to come alive. Tourists come out of the woodwork as soon as the canal tours start to open up. And man, oh man, do the tour operators PACK you into those boats. Our tour operator was nice. He had to give the tour in English, French, and German, which I thought was impressive. Although, I think anyone who speaks more than one language is pretty awesome (which is pretty much everyone other than most Americans).
It started drizzling while on the boat, but that wasn't such a big deal. I WAS very chilly, but even THAT wasn't such a huge deal. What WAS a huge annoyance were the people in front of us on the boat who insisted on putting up their umbrella every single time a drop of rain even THREATENED to land on them. It made picture taking verrrrry difficult.
This is the hotel that was in the movie "In Bruges". We later walked to it, to take a picture of the front of the hotel. They had a price list for rooms up front. I really wish we could stay in this hotel some day, but I just can't justify spending $300 a night for a small hotel...I think my husband's frugality is rubbing off on me.
After the canal tour, we decided to - guess what - walk around some more. We stopped off at this awesome store - 2be. They had everything at this store - all the local beer, chocolate, snacks, souvenir things that you could want, but it was done very artsy-fartsy. I loved this store. They had a beer wall, and then a bar out back.
The next thing on my itinerary was for Josh to climb the belfry. I wouldn't have been able to climb it, but I wanted him to be able to. Well, I probably could have climbed UP the tower, but going down would have been almost impossible. My ankle was still sore from the day before, and we still had half a day ahead of us.
Unfortunately, we weren't expecting the line to be so long. It was HUUUUGE. Josh didn't feel like standing in line, and that was fine with me, because I didn't feel like waiting for that long.
Next on my agenda was a Fry museum, and a Chocolate museum. After a day and a half of looking at chocolate shops, we didn't really care too much to go to the chocolate museum. And the only reason I really wanted to go to the fry museum was because they had cutouts of fries you can stick your head thru to take goofy tourist pictures. Now, Belgian frites are things of beauty. These fries are so flippin' good. But both these museums were even FURTHER from the center of town, and my leg was angry with me. So, we cancelled the museum trips. But, in exchange for the fry museum, we instead feasted on Belgian fries from one of the many local stands.
It was 2.50 euros for a medium fry, plus 60 cents more for a topping. They had about 10 different toppings - mayo is by far the most popular, but they also had ketchup, curry sauce, pepper sauce, cocktail sauce, tartar sauce, American sauce (whatever the hell that is), mustard, pickles, etc. etc. etc. Josh got ketchup (surprise, surprise) and I got mustard. These fries were so good. We sat and ate in the shadow of the belfry, watching all the tourists. It was a good lunch.
Then came my favorite part of the day. We had to make it back to the Half Moon Brewery, which was on the south end of town. We didn't have a watch with us, and we forgot the cell phone in the room, so we had no idea what time it was (this is before we realized that the belfry had a big huge clock that we had been taking millions of pictures of...dumb). So, we asked an American couple what time it was.
Lady: "Oh, do you have a tour group you need to meet back up with?"
Me: "No, we're on our own."
HA!!! We're on our own. That made me feel good. We don't need no stinkin' tour group to go to these places. Awesome!
Anyway, it was about 2pm or so by this point, so we started heading over to the brewery. This was also on my itinerary. By the time we made it to the brewery, my leg was killing me. I had read that there were a lot of rickety staircases on the brewery tour, so I was sort of hesitant about it. Then, Josh confessed that he didn't really care about doing a tour. Well, dash it all, so much for my stupid itinerary. But, I still wanted to go to the brewery, even if we didn't do a tour. I'm kind of glad I chose not to do it, because there were a lot of people in line, and I just wanted to sit and relax. Which we did.
After a little more walking around and taking pics, we decided to rest up at the hotel for a little while.
We ran by a grocery store first, and got stuff for dinner - a baguette, sliced chicken for Josh, some cheese, and some olives. Sometimes the simple stuff is the best stuff, eh?
Now, it was almost 5pm when we got to the hotel. We were thoroughly planning on just resting up, and going out later. But....the road to hell is paved with good intentions, after all. We were so tired, and it was so muggy outside. The a/c felt so good, as did the bed. My ankle felt so much better being propped up in bed. We never actually made it back out of our hotel room. Lame, right? I don't care, we were on vacation, and we're happy with our choices.
The next morning - it was time to go. Boo!! Before we headed out, we decided to stop by the windmills around the outskirts of the city.
And then, unfortunately, it was time to go home. And of course it was sunny our entire drive back to Germany. Stupid weather.
I did learn a couple things on this trip:
1. Mayo on fries is not that bad. Josh and I cannot STAND mayonnaise. But, when in Rome, eh? The restaurant we went to on Saturday served Josh's fries with real, homemade mayo. Maybe that was the difference? Anyway, it was really really tangy, and not vomit inducing, like we thought it would be.
2. I hope I don't get flak for this. Josh and I have realized that a certain nationality cannot be called a "rude tourist". Yes, there are rude Americans, just as there are rude French, and Brits, blah blah blah. But you can't single out a nation and call them bad tourists.
HOWEVER, we HAVE realized that there is a group of people that can be so over-the-top rude that it's just plain funny. And that is - old people. Now, all of my family, and all of our older friends are very culturally aware, and sensitive to others. I think maybe that's why we were both so shocked at certain behaviors presented in older people. All of the older people in our lives are awesome. But you get a group of blue-haired tourists, and you better watch out. We have NEVER been cut in front of in line by anyone other than old people. It happened at least 3 times while in Brugge. And the rude comments they make about other people...it's scandalous.
I really hope I didn't offend anyone reading this blog - like I said, our family & friends are awesome.
3. Germans apparently don't know where the hell Brugge is. We talked to our landlord about it, and Josh talked to another few Germans that he knows. None of them knew what the hell we were talking about when we said we were going to Brugge, Belgium. "Oh, you mean Brussels?" Nope, not Brussels.
4. Belgian chocolate & beer really are as good as you've heard.
5. The locals in Belgium are far more friendly than the locals in Germany. Now, I'm not saying Germans are rude - not at all. They're just more standoffish and shy. The locals in Brugge were really nice.
6. Germans really really know how to approach strange dogs, and become their friends within seconds. I know this has nothing to do with our Brugge trip, but it's just something Josh and I realized this weekend. Germans just instinctively know what to do when it comes to dogs, and it's awesome.
7. Have a basic itinerary, but don't get your panties in a wad when you realize it's all going to pot.
All in all, we had a great trip. I can't wait for us to explore even more of Europe.
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