belgium

After heading to the dentist on Friday morning and getting 3 fillings I vowed no more sweet things or anything bad ever again! However that was impossible to do Belguim! The weekend just been was about enjoying the good things in life. Beer, chocolates, waffles, christmas, good company, no fuss, just laid back goodtimes...

I meet Jo, Richie and Mel at Kings Cross station and after purchasing papers, and mags and food for the journey we went through customs and boarded the train at about 3pm. The train ride was pretty uneventlful although it was quite beauitful as the moon was 14x its normal size (some weird scientific reason I cant remember why). We arrived into Brussels then had a sweet easy connection to Bruge. Rolled into town about 7.30ish and caught the bus (with an extreamly enthusastic driver) to snuffle backpackers. The backpackers was basic but warm, and after minor confusion with our booking we dropped our stuff in our room and added an extra layer. belgium was noticably colder than london. We were on a food mission and stopped at a little posh place that looked very hansel and gretel. After de-layering we tried to order a couple of muscle pots with beers, but unfortunatly we were told that you had to order a main each... at 30 Euro a pop, we didnt really want to do that... so throwing everything back on, we shuffled out of the fancy place and found a resturant much more like us down the road. We indulged. Had a large feed of musscels (although the muscles were tiny, they wouldnt even be a legal size back home!) waffles and a few too many Bruge Zot (the local beer). We tried our luck in a few other pubs, altough you can still smoke inside which made us turn around quickly in a couple of them! Danced and drunk friday night away, numbed the pain of my teeth, thank goodness.

Saturday we were up earlish and after a solid breaky in the backpackers we took too the markets. Bruges really is a magically little city. And the medievil architecture is enhanced by the delightfulness of the Christmas markets, ice rink, and horse and carts wandering past. After shopping around a bit, we found our way to the local brewry and did a tour, was established about 1850 and is still in use today. Quite an interesting, complicated proccess goes into making beer which gave me a new found appreciation! After the tour we had our complimentary beers... which gave us a nice warm glow... we went back outside and wandered around the city once again, however it was freezing, so low-in-behold we found ourselves another cosy pub with an open fire and beer to warm the belly. Not too sure where the time went but the sun went down, and we were still sitting there. We got a call from a friend who was also in Bruges so we went to meet them in a place with 400 different sorts of belgium beer. Need I say more... Chocolate beer, banana beer, strawberry beers... more chocolates, and a great night...

Sunday we packed up, had brekky and went back into town, this time to climb the bell tower. It had an amazing view of the city, and the bells chimed for what felt like ages when we were up there. I found myself a couple of prints and richie found a few pins. We caught the train into Brussels about mid day and spent the avo looking around the central place. There were so many people it was almost a bit much. When the sun went down we stood with the masses of others and watched a light display on one of the old medieval buildings. It was truly like nothing Ive ever seen before. Christmas just feels so different over here, so magical and I feel like a child would love to share it with everyone so heres some piccies...