You may wonder why there is a picture of a Playmobil family gracing this post but that is because this afternoon my camera was usurped for a fashion shoot - which caused my battery to run out. I noticed the dead battery only when I took my camera out to take some photos of who knows what (but I'm sure it would've been amazing...). So, these fine playmobil characters deserve a top billing instead of a boring church or canal or something mundane like that. Apparently the young girl in purple has consumed a bit too much (delicious) Belgian beer because she looks a bit tipsy!
As for the other photo - Jeff ordered the giant beer (and it really was giant!) while I stuck with the more moderate half litre size... talk about filling! What's interesting to note is that each different style of beer has their own size and shape of glass to highlight the characteristic of the beer. Can you imagine the logistical nightmare of storing all of these different glasses??
Okay, aside from beer we had a really nice day here in Bruges. We met my mom after breakfast and just wandered the town for awhile before stopping for lunch. We ate next to the world's largest (in our personal opinion) garage sale/flea market. I guess when people usually live in small apartments they don't get the opportunity to have a regular garage sale so everyone was just out selling their stuff - seriously just garage sale stuff. Like an old puzzle, a doll with one leg, used dirty shoes...! At first we were intrigued and then just kind of grossest out. There was so much stuff, and so overpriced! Why would I but an old dirty doll for 4 euros? Weird.
My mom had discovered a great playground so led us there much to the kid's delight. This was a serious playground - huge and very, very busy. The kids happily played for quite awhile and left only under the condition that we'd return at some point. By this time we were all tired because we had become accustomed to sitting on a beach not walking around! So, we headed home and had a nice rest (which is when the playmobil photo shoot occured).
Dinner was in Market Square where I decided to try some Belgian specialties even though I didn't really feel like it. I had some pate and toast to start which was surprisingly good and was accompanied by a bunch of baby picked onions which Julia discovered and ate almost all of. She also ate half of Jeff's mussels... she has expensive taste! I then had some kind of creamed chicken stew which was pretty good, but honestly nothing like the amazing food we had in the south of France. The beer, however, was delicious. We went on a chocolate hunt after dinner but because it's Sunday night everything was closed - luckily in the afternoon we'd already tried some (each choosing one delicious choice from behind the counter) so we were at least partially satiated! Tomorrow I'm sure we'll make up for lost time!
I'll give a quick rundown of Bruges and it's history for anyone whose interested. (If you aren't, stop reading now!) In the 14th century Bruges was huge and had a population close to London (around 35000) - it's size due to the fact that it was a major port in the trade between northern and southern Europe. Unfortunately (for Bruges) in the 16th century the harbour silted up and the town basically died... only to be resurrected by the tourism industry in the 19th century. (It's now a 15 minute train ride from the coast.) It's quite the interesting town in that there are some really old buildings and monuments juxtaposed with quite modern buildings. I saw a building built to look really old (I may have guessed the 1700's) but it had the year 1967 stamped over it's door! Then tonight as we were walking my mom noticed an old building marked 1489! Crazy. You can tell that WW1 took a major toll on this area because there are numerous monuments with the names of the dead - and there are A LOT of names, for a town that at the time wasn't very big.
So, although we didn't really do anything too 'touristy' today we enjoyed walking around and soaking up the atmosphere. The people are friendly and the town is quaint - not a bad way to spend a Sunday!
No comments:
Post a Comment