B & B in B

Brugge and Brusselles in Belgium. After Amsterdam we made our way into Belgium to have real belgium waffles, fries and chocolate, and we certainly did. Our first night in Brugge we wandered into the market square and found a street vendor selling hot french fries which he then smothered in ketchup. they were very good, and accompanied our "Q" burger very well. The city was a little bit of a sleepy town so we spent the evening taking showers and relaxing. (the showers, by the way, looked like they had been stolen from a prison: simple square stalls with pull CHAINS that released water out of the large shower head above. and you just got whatever temperature water it wanted to give you because there were no controls.) Interesting.

The Brugge buildings are beautifully built--very colorful and with fun shaped rooftops. Cobblestone streets next to the little flowing rivers and chocolate shop after chocolate shop of delicate sweets. We saw the church of Holy Blood that supposedly has christ's blood as a relic, then saw the other church with Michaelangelo's Madonna and Child. The sculpture was beautiful and set in such an unassuming church. We weaved through the streets for a little while out to the grassy paths that follow along the surrounding river. Not too far down we came up to two windmills up on the little grassy knolls and got to climb up inside one. It was so fun to see windmills in Holland--the whole town is so picturesque. We shopped in the city for a while then stopped into a grocery store and got stuff to make an awesome salad back at the hostel: rocket lettuce, parmasean cheese, sundried tomatoes, croutons, pinenuts, mixed nuts, tomatoes, cucumber and chicken nuggets. it was a wonderful meal.

It started to sprinkle throughout the day so we made a night of emailing, planning our stay in london, and playing scrabble on the top bunk bed. the game was so cool...we used every letter in turn, filled up the board, and tied with a score of 201 each. And we enjoyed it with a healthy dose of gummy candy too. Brugge, although a little gloomy and rainy, was a sweet little town that we enjoyed spending time in. (oh and we had the best belgian waffles with haagen daze icecream and caramel sauce!)

Brussells was a short one night stop before Paris. We took the short train ride in the morning and were able to see parts of the city before checking into the hotel. Still raining, we meandered through the city buildings in our raincoats searching for a good cafe to snuggle up in. Well, we ended up eating at Subway (not a snuggley cafe) but then got a brownie and some coffee at a place called the coffee company. It was a cute little cafe with modern furniture and terrible music. We both had to turn our ipods on to drown out the jr. high talent show sounding singers.

Rainy days are always great days for a movie so we went to the cinema and saw Monsters vs. Aliens. we went into the 16:00 showing and realized that everything was French and wasn't going to stop being French anytime soon. So we left and were told to come back to the 18:00 showing that would be in English. Much better. It was fun to see a movie together and be able to understand it all too! The city wasn't anything terribly special, but it was cool to see anyway. Later that night we went and got dinner at a cafe by the botanical gardens and didn't realize that it was so late until our waiter brought our check over and said they were closing. it was already 11 and we felt like it was 8:30. It stays light until around 9pm so the days seem sooo long. The gardens were really pretty to walk through, and it was nice to see some green amist the towering skyscrapers. I was disappointed we didn't get to eat brussell sprouts in Brussells, but oh well!