On Sunday, the second day of our Belgium trip we caught a train to Bruges.
It has quite a nice old city center, with cobbled narrow streets and not many cars around. There were also quite a few horses + carts around, carrying tourists on trips around the city.
We climbed up the tower in the center of town, which had 360 or so of the worst steps I have ever used. The stairs start out ok, and get increasingly narrow, steep and tilted as you climb up. It seemed like at the top every stair had a different slope, width and height, which made climbing up and down quite an adventure.
The Belfry Tower, Bruges
This tower is featured in the movie “In Bruges” in a scene where Colin Farrell tells a fat American he will never make it up the tower because he is too fat, and the stairs are too narrow. Colin was absolutely correct, and probably saved the guy €6, but he didn’t get much thanks for it.
There were good views from the top, and also cold fast winds. The bells also chimed the quarter hour, and I feel sorry for people who get caught up there when they really go off.
View of Bruges from the Belfry
After the Tower we had lunch at a place in the square. It was a pretty fancy restuarant, but luckily Sarah decided to order the €10 mussels special instead of the €45 1/2 lobster in love (in gin and martini). The mussels were quite good, although much smaller than the mussels you would get in NZ. They came in a pot, and there were probably 30 – 50 mussels, with the eatable part of each one being about the size of my thumb.
I had 1/2 chicken and chips, and a €3.50 200ml coke! That makes it the most expensive coke I have had so far, and of course I didn’t know how small or expensive it was going to be before I ordered it. At least the chicken and mussels were good.
After lunch we went to a chocolate musuem, which had a history of chocolate, a chocolate art gallery, and a short demonstration of making pralines.
Chocolate Madonna and Child
The most interesting part to me was to make the praline shells, they fill the mold with chocolate, leave it for a few seconds to let the outside harden, then flip the mold over and let the rest of the chocolate fall out. I thought it would be harder than that, but sometimes life is simple I guess.
Chocolate Statues