This is a continuation of our first holiday to Belgium while living in the UK (Check out the first blog post here). This one is all about Bruges!

On Saturday (1 September), we went to Bruges and what a beautiful city it was! It was nice and sunny out, so we really took advantage of walking around the town. We found parking, which was actually pretty cool because you could add money to your meter from any other meter in the city. You just had to enter your license plate number and boom – Paid! We first strolled through the Historic Centre of Bruges seeing different architectural buildings such as the Belfort, the Markt, and a church which I can’t remember the name of (but I have pictures!). We hopped on a cheap little touristy boat and cruised through the city while the guide informed us about the town in three languages: English, French, and I want to say the third was Dutch, but I’m not too sure. We saw some of the different structures in the town, but my favorite thing on the boat tour was the huge whale made of recycling material.

We were quite hungry during this journey, but the food was so expensive! We ended up at Café Cambrinus (at least that’s what google tells me) where we got a meat sampler and tried out some Belgium Beer. I’d say 6/8 beers we had were amazing, which is pretty good because I don’t like many beers (Yes, you’ll see my drink beers quite often, but that doesn’t mean it’s my preferred drink!). After eating a little grub, we began our hunt for the best chocolate in town. We were super touristy and just followed google and trip advisor, so we ended up in this shop called “The Chocolate Line” which was good, but obviously expensive. We stopped by another shop around the corner which was smaller and cheaper, and honestly, I think their chocolate tasted much better. Unfortunately, I don’t have the name of the shop we went to. Either way, I loved the chocolate in Belgium…until we had too much chocolate which I’ll also cover later. We probably would have benefited from asking a local where we should get some really good chocolate. Lessons learned.

Davoo was interested in seeing the “Windmills of Bruges,” so we headed that way. We walked for quite some time, but as I mentioned earlier, the weather was beautiful, so it was a journey well spent. We traveled along a little stream (or river?) and took some cool pictures while there. We got to the windmills and had such a great time there. There was a family of five seeing the windmills as well who offered to take our picture. The parents were super laidback with their kids and let them run around and have the time of their lives. They jumped off the windmill and the parents strongly suggested “keeping their knees together” when they landed so they wouldn’t hurt themselves. The son decided he’d roll down the steep hill to have some fun and then busted his head on the street. He was so confused he practically had birds flying around his head, but he obviously knew he was being dumb because he didn’t complain or say anything. He just put his hand on his head and stopped playing. It was funny, but I know his head hurt the next day!

It took us forever to walk back and by the time we got to the car we were starving. The restaurants weren’t really open because it was Sunday, and the places that were open were too expensive, so we decided to grab food on the way home. We went to this Asian buffet which was an experience itself. We were so thirsty the whole time we were out that we kept ordering waters. When the bill came, we quickly learned that in Europe, you are charged for water, even if it’s tap water. We all had like six glasses and they were like $2 each! Learned that lesson fast.

#Lessonslearned – Water in Europe is not free.