Day 10: Bruges

1/5/2010

Next to our wedding day, I think today was one of the best days of our lives! :) Delicious food, gorgeous city, great company... I could do this everyday.

We are both in Heaven here in Bruges. The city is just AMAZING. From the moment we stepped out the door we both went nuts taking photos, trying to capture the feeling you get as walk down the old narrow cobble stone streets. It truly is like walking through a story book. When I was in Europe a few years ago with my cousin I fell in LOVE with this city and it became my favorite place in Europe. Ever since that trip I have been saying how much I would love to go here with Marcus. I'm excited to say that he has totally fallen in love with  Bruges as well, I'm so stoked to share this with him.

We are staying at a B&B, the same one I stayed in last time actually. We had a nice breakfast that was served with fresh Dutch Gouda and hand squeezed OJ. After breakfast we walked to the city center, or "Markt," and climbed the famous belfry bell tower. It was an exhausting 366 narrow, steep steps made for someone with a size 2 foot, but the view was more than worth it. It was a gorgeous clear day with a beautiful blue sky, the nicest day we've seen so far.

After our trek back down the winding steps we rewarded ourselves with some frites and went to the Halve Maan Brewary for a tour. The tour was very interesting and included a beautiful city view from the top of the brewery. We ran into the couple from San Francisco that we met yesterday at the train station and made plans to meet up in the evening for a few beers.

The brewery was followed by a visit to Church of Our Lady... we probably should have planned that better. There we saw Michelangelo's "Madonna and Child." Even though I saw it last time I was here I still stood in awe at all of the detail and life in the sculpture. We both remarked about how it looked like it could just come to life at any moment...truly an amazing piece of work.

What do you do after seeing a  500 year old timeless piece of work sculpted by Michelangelo? Eat a Belgian waffle of course! After our waffle and coffee we met up with Sonia and David, the couple from SF. David had been telling us about this elusive beer "Trappist Westvleteren 12" that was nearly impossible to find but this particular pub we were at carried it. It wasn't on their menu, you had to know about it to order it. It felt like we were part of some secret club now so of course we had to try it. It was delicious and at 10.2% abv and 11 Euro/glass we nursed it for a bit, taking in all of it's bubbly, hoppy glory. We ordered a few more beers, eventually dinner, and spent the rest of the night drinking and chatting with our new friends. We had a frites night cap and crawled back to the B&B, all in hopes of doing it again tomorrow.