BELGIUM (Bruges, only)
Flew into Brussels and had to catch a somewhat expensive bus shuttle into the city. Then caught a train to Bruges. Kick-ass thing about Belgium? Our train pass worked as I hoped it would work --- no additional charge for the trip. Woooo! We stayed at Rita's, B and B of Roger's past near the canal. It is lovely and contains aforementioned stained glass.
Bruges is quite lovely. Steeped rooves on the houses and canal running rampant - rather standing rampantly, as they are canals and not rivers. Rita still exists!(Rita being the room-renter-outer who rented a room to Roger and his friend Tom some years ago on their unknowingly romantic beer-tasting trip to Bruges.)
She is younger than I had imagined and the house, rather than being free-standing, about to fall into a canal, is a bit down a side street and well built, connected to the houses on either side of it. She gives us the front room full of light and three beds.
Note about traveling on the semi-cheap: sometimes with two people when you request a double you will get just that; a single bed to share. Sometimes you will get two twin beds shoved together. Depending upon the fixed or unfixed nature of the legs you will have a variable (surprisingly) exciting time of it. Sometimes you will get two twin beds separated by a chaste distance. Sometimes you will get bunkbeds, the most chummy appointments of them all.
After dropping off our things we took a stroll around town. There are AMPLE opportunities to buy chocolates, lace, fries, or waffles. Ample. On day one I bought myself a single zippo sized caramel and then Roger and I shared a panini and a chocolate covered waffle. This waffle had caramelized bits on the edges. Lovely.
Back for a nap and then out for dinner. The beer accompanying dinner was great and the meal itself good, though we didn't do a great job getting off of the beaten (tourist) path. Nonetheless the mat at the table was advertising a sweet ice show with the Lord of the Rings that had, sadly, already closed its frosty gates. Entertaining reading.
We tried some mussels au gratin, pickled herring (tasty if you like pickles!), our main plates were covered in the same wine reduction sauce which was tasty with ligonberries but the main meats themselves escape us so they were not the bomb (enough to be remembered, anyway. They were perfectly servicable as meats go). There was a tower lobster tank with dispondent lobsters overlooked by several paintings of assumedly important figures who seemed to come from a B-list Dracula film. All in all a solid time was had by all.
Day two in Bruges.
We woke up, had home-made croissants (by Rita, copyright) and a sampling of foods from the sidebar - yogurt, fruit, cheese, ham, bread rolls that looked like butts and tasted like delicious rolls (thankfully).
A note about croissants: I am having a European love affair with croissants. Before this trip I don't think I had ever eaten a truly fresh, tasty croissant. I didn't understand what the big deal was about them and almost didn't have one in Paris. Little did I know what light, stretchy heaven I might have missed. Sub-par croissants should be given to pigeons or made into wistful croutons. On the train from Prague to Krakow - I know, a bit of a jump ahead - we were given pre-packaged cocoa croissants. Although touched by the free snack, I was not impressed with the fare and left it... braving hunger for the sake of my newly found croissant standards. Foolish? Perhaps. Upholding of my newly minted croissant standards? Mais, oui.Absolutely. Perhaps some pigeons will have a delightful supper of that abandoned croissant. More likely, as it was left sealed, some other traveler will get it.
Back to Bruges! (which is also sometimes spelled Brugge. Why don't all maps spell a country or city the way the people who live there spell it? What the what, map-makers??) After breakfast we went out for another stroll. We took a canal boat ride with a (at least) trilingual guide. He would tell us a detail about the city first in English and then in French. He was about as excited about the tour as a cat in a poop pile. He brought new meaning to monotone. A water steward of the byways who'd been at his post twenty years too long. At the end of each French description he'd wave a careless hand at the mentioned attraction. Classic.
After disembarking we found ourselves quite chilled -upon returning to the mainland of Europe from Scotland we have found Winter- and so made our way to sushi (that's Belgian, right?). Another couple hours of wandering during which we found a third-generation chocolatier who sold us a kilo of chocolate for 12 Euro. A KILO. Of delicious hand-crafted chocolates. Wow. Then a nap. (Note: our chocolates lasted us through Vienna.)
Dinner found us on a wee side street with three awesome looking bars: De Hobbit, De Habit, and another I've forgotten. We ate some kick-ass ribs and seafood spaghetti at De Hobbit (though upon attempting to split one main dish the waitress gave us crap and so, while delicious, we were exceptionally full with two) and then crossed the street to the forgotten bar where they had hundreds of beers available. I tried a banana beer - like a banana Runt with a slightly off tang on the dismount - and a darker beer. Roger had two Belgian micro-brews. Photos will be more informative.
Back for sleep, another delicious Rita breakfast (this was the breakfast where we learned she crafted her own croissants because we had to wait for them to be removed from the oven. Oh, heaven.) and then onto the bus to the train station. Trip to Brussels, transfer to Frankfurt (nice and inexpensive - only cost the reservation of specific seats) where we arrived in the mid-afternoon.
No comments:
Post a Comment