Tour of Bruges

This morning, while Jeremy rode his dream portion of legendary climbs of the Tour of Flanders (which will mean nothing to most, but something if you know anything about European cycling), I slept in and then read up on Bruges since that was our destination city of the day. I focused on the important things, and namely Rick Steves’ recommendations on the best chocolate shops in town.

It took us about 30 minutes to get to Bruges from Ghent. It was a beautiful drive and when we arrived an even more beautiful city. We parked at the bus station (another Rick Steves tip) and only had to pay 3.50 in Euros for the entire day of parking. We also got a free bus ride into the city center where we walked around for a bit and then looked for lunch. It can be daunting to find good food when you have no idea where to look, but I said a quick prayer and a few minutes later, we ended up at a cute little restaurant where we ordered fish and chips and a big pot of steamed mussels. The food was really tasty and fun to eat as well.

After our meal, we walked over to the Church of Our Lady which had a lot of beautiful artworks and an incredible altar piece to admire.

The reason we came though, was to admire Michelangelo’s marble sculpture, the Madonna and the Child. I read somewhere that he worked on it in while he was also working on his famous sculpture of David. Due to reconstruction in the church, we only had a limited view of the stature (because of this, we did save 5 Euros off our tickets). But what we could see, was absolutely stunning.

After our church visit, I got another waffle. Because I’m pretty sure this is the only time I will ever be able to get them. I should probably note that every waffle I get, I do share with my husband, so it’s not so bad when I think of it that way, right?

But today was actually quite the food day and I’m not sure I can justify it all. Because in addition to waffles we also at a lot of chocolate. Bruges basically had multiple chocolate shops on every street. You could almost smell it in the air. I found the shop I had been reading about in our Rick Steves Belgium travel guide and it was a delightful experience. The shop owner was so sweet and patiently described the goodness in each hand created piece. We left with some treasures, that is for sure.

And then we walked.

We took in as much of this beautiful city as we could.

This was our favorite square and these were our favorite buildings.

And this was my favorite waffle of the trip. I finally broke down to get something more exciting and I’m very glad that I did.

I have to say that I love this man. He really is the reason that we’ve taken so many fun trips. I’m mostly along for the ride and the good food. But it’s his sense of adventure that leads us to explore and it does make life quite exciting and beautiful in times like these.

After getting a little lost and accidentally driving our car through Bruges (which I don’t think your’e supposed to do) we arrived back in Ghent as the sun was setting. I made myself run another 5K to balance out all the fun things we ate today. I have to say it was a little (teensy-tiny) bit easier this time though it was also colder too.

But I think I’ve been inspired by the beauty of this city and running around it to see sites like this make it that much more enjoyable.

Also, the entire time I was running, I knew when I got back there would be hot bread, cheese and a few small pieces of very expensive jamon to enjoy. We stopped at a fancy deli/restaurant called D’s in Bruges. We saw the jamon and had learned about it watching Chef’s Table. It was so expensive that those two small pieces that you see below cost about 5 euros. Sometimes you feel like being fun though, and that is how we felt and it made for a nice treat this evening.