Brugge

So, my stepmom, Jen, and my brother, David are here for a visit for 2 weeks. We're very excited to have them, we haven't had anybody over in a year. We have some new places on the schedule and some old ones. Unfortunately, scheduling conflicts mean that Max can't accompany us to any of them.

Today was Brugge, Belgium. We've been to Brussels, but never Brugge. I had a bunch of people tell me that it's beautiful. Well, it is.

The morning started out poorly. We got out of the house in plenty of time, but we ran into three hours straight of pouring rain. Almost the entire time we drove through Germany was a deluge. It was miserable driving in it. I was also driving Max's car, because the vent in mine decided to crap out. It will only work on high now, which is not a pleasant way to be. We stopped for gas at the last Esso in Germany along our route, and I got the gas. I got in to pay for it, and realized I didn't know the pin for Max's gas card. I tried the few that I thought it could be, but no. So, 60 euro for gas.

It stopped raining as we got into the Netherlands. We stopped for some snacks and a bathroom, since the ones at Esso had looked unpleasant. I was excited to see non-MSG flavored chips (normally anything but plain has MSG, and I can't have MSG). So, I got them. Steak & onion. They were yummy for the first few chips. After that, I just really wanted something that tasted like chips. Ah, well. Lesson learned. The Netherlands does have my favorite Fanta, so that's good.

After that, the drive was rather uneventful. We got to Brugge later than we had intened, but still a reasonable time, and went to find our hotel. The address hadn't been in the GPS, but that happens pretty often, since our maps are like 5 years old now. So, I looked at the google map of the area and at the map on the GPS, and picked out a road that was nearby, and that it seemed easy to find the new road from there. We drove straight there. There was no new road. OK, that's odd. I knew it was right by the train station, so we drove around the train station (which isn't like just taking one road around the train station. No, it is many merging, stressful things. Finally, we just pulled into the parking structure for the train station. I thought we would walk in and see if we could find any information inside the train station. We parked at the top of the structure and started to walk. I look up, and whaddya know, there's the hotel. You have to go to the top of the parking and then take an elevator. At the top of the elevator, there's a street sign. There's no street, but there's a street sign. It's the street on the address. Awesome.

The street sign isn't that big white sign, it's the small one under it

Luckily, though, that's the only problem we had with the hotel. We checked in easy as pie and found our rooms. We freshened up and met back to go get some lunch and go exploring. I knew nothing of Brugge, really. We knew we wanted to go on a canal tour. We thought that the french fry museum sounded like fun, we needed to buy chocolates, and we needed to eat fries and waffles. That's about it. I actually did see that there was a Tin Tin store, and I wanted to see that to get Max a gift, since he loves Tin Tin.

We headed out. The hotel was actually quite close to the old town. It was a lovely walk. I felt calm again after the stressful morning, and all was good. We found a place for lunch. It was yummy, and Jen & David got to see that in Europe, you pay twice as much money for teeny amounts of soda. And they come in bottles most of the time.

We wandered towards the canal ride and took lots of pictures along the way. Brugge looks quite Dutch, I think, with the canals and the architecture.

The tiniest car! and it had a backseat!

The boat ride was wonderful. It was relaxing and we got so many beautiful pictures. There was one church that I loved especially. It had the most charming little boat garage.

The boat garage church

A dog out a window

After the boat, we went to find chocolate. Some friends had recommended Depla chocolates, so we went there. We passed it at first, but we found it without too much trouble on the return pass. The chocolates were beautiful, and looked scrumptious, but they were a tad pricey for mass purchasing. We each got a chocolate, and decided to buy things for friends at a more reasonably priced place.

Em's chocolate hedgehog

We looked for the Tin Tin store, but it was gone. :( It was right off the main square, though, so it wasn't a huge loss in terms of time. We needed to be there, anyway. We admired the lovely square and looked for waffles. We saw some in sit-down places, but that's not the real waffle experience. Plus, we weren't really hungry, since we had just eaten. We decided to find waffles elsewhere.

I liked this double bike

Old Town

David saw a Dali museum that he wanted to go in, so we did. I was actually very surprised once we got in. I never knew there was any Dali that I liked. But, he did a number of watercolors that I really enjoyed.

Who knew that Dali went through a puffy paint phase?

We were going to go to the fry museum, but it was closed by then. The rain and the hotel fiasco had really made us late. We found a fry place and had some fries. When in Belgium, you have to eat fries with mayo. It's the law.

These are all things you can get fried

Frites & mayo!

We found a shop that looked promising as far as chocolate went, but we couldn't figure out how to actually buy the chocolates.

Couldn't figure out the chocolates, but the cookies were pretty!

Luckily, there was another place nearby. We then smelled the wonderful aroma of freshly made waffles at a waffle stand. We got our waffles. Ah, Belgian waffles with Belgian chocolate melted on top, how I love thee.

By now, everything was closing, so we started wandering back towards the hotel.

We went a different way than we came in, and I'm so glad, because we got some awesome pictures. There was one spot where I peeked in through a gateway because I saw a sign I liked, and came into a whole courtyard of beauty.

We had planned on going to the Netherlands for dinner near the North Sea. But, none of us were hungry at all. So, we cut some time off and just went to Blankenberge, a city on the North Sea in Belgium. It was only like 20 minutes away.

We found parking and easily walked to the beach. Much like the beach we went to when we visited the North Sea in The Netherlands a couple of years ago, the beach was covered in cabanas. Though, they were all closed up when we were there. We enjoyed walking on the beach and finding shells. They have some of the prettiest shells there. Lots of black ones and stripey ones. At one point, Jen stuck her feet in the sand and scared  worm! It jumped out and then buried itself again. We did that a couple of times. It made us shriek. Em  was convinced it was parasitic and would crawl up through her foot, so she stayed back.

The city from the beach. The little things in front are closed up cabans

David had been under the pier for most of the time, where there were lots of tide pools. He wanted to show us, so we went over there, too. Barnacles were blanketing the rocks and the underside of the pier. You could hear them crackling. It was the oddest thing, like marine Rice Krispies. We found some little sea anemones and some starfish. After that, it was back to the hotel for some sleeping. It started out pretty crappy, but it turned into a very nice day indeed.

Under the pier

Starfish!

Emma says - It was really pretty in Brugge, and all of the food was really good. Mom was happy because of her Fanta. The canal ride was pretty, and there were a lot of cool things. We saw ducks, swans, and houses with porches on the water. But, we didn't see any boats to use the porches. The chocolate was sooo good! I had a little hedgehog, but when I bit into it, there was some alcohol in the middle, so I named it Haymitch. I didn't really have many frites, but the waffles were sooo good! MMMM....waffles. The beach was a lot of fun. Jen found a sand worm thingy that creeped me out. I went under the pier with David, and all of the rocks were covered in barnacles. There were crabs and sea anemones, and I got to pick up a starfish. It did a backflip in my hand. When we were walking back along the beach, we found a lot of crab carcasses.