Brugge

Postcard view of Brugge

Belgium is an amazing country that I feel is overlooked by many people. Brugge was one of my favorite places we've been. It's so quaint and peaceful - a great place for a chill holiday. The good thing is, there's lots to do, so you won't get bored if you are there a couple days.
There are five things that Brugge is known for: fries, waffles, lace, chocolate, and beer. In Brugge, just about every storefront has one of these things. I'm not entirely sure how all the chocolatiers stay in business there, because literally every 3rd store is a chocolate shop. It's pretty great, because its very easy to satisfy those chocolate cravings on the spot!

Sarah and I were quite serious about our Belgian chocolate, and as we each purchased roughly 6 pounds of the stuff, we decided to go on a very intense chocolate tasting of three of the most highly rated chocolatiers in Brugge. While this was an enlightening experiment, we actually ended up getting chocolate from all three chocolatiers simply because they were all quite different. I am still swooning over The Chocolate Line's caramel chocolates though...
Just to be touristy, we went to the fries museum. Here we learned basically everything we ever wanted to know about potatoes and how fries came to be. In Belgium, they deep fry them twice in two different oils, and they are more of a steak cut fry than the normal fast food fries you find here. They do taste much better than American fries, however, they are still fries and you still feel gross after consuming a large quantity of deep fried goodness!

I was really looking forward to trying Belgian waffles, because as you know, or should have figured out by now, I am completely obsessed with dessert. Frankly, I was blown away. They are not at all like the waffles we have here that we eat for breakfast. Belgian waffles are very sweet, especially when you add toppings like Nutella, whipped cream, etc. They are not a breakfast food (but seriously, I would eat them at any time because they are amazing), but they make the most delicious snack.

Brugge by night

The making of lace is something that I never really considered before. While we were in Brugge, we went to a place where these old ladies sit in a room that looks like it used to be a small classroom and make lace by hand. I was blown away. First of all, most of the ladies were easily over 80 years old. Secondly, they were sitting on wooden chairs, like you would find in a traditional dining room. Thirdly, they can move their hands faster than anyone I've ever seen, and the one old lady was making lace without looking at her hands or the pattern while talking to us in broken English and showing us some of her other work. If you have never seen lace being made, you probably should Youtube it or something. they have these bobbins of thread that they pretty much toss around, weaving an intricate pattern. They stick pins into the pattern to weave around, and that's how you get the larger holes in lace. It was really cool, and definitely worth the two or three euros to see.

As far as the beer, there is a brewery in town who makes a special beer that they do not sell to anyone, so if you want to try it, you have to go to that specific brewery. Its highly potent stuff at a whopping 12.5% and they will cut you off after three. I didn't try it, so I can't tell you what it tastes like, but you can go check it out if you'd like! Besides that specific beer, they make hundreds of other beers in Belgium, so there's lots for you to chose from.

The architecture is really beautiful in Brugge. It's a World Heritage Site, so all the buildings are very well preserved. If the building is in its original state as it was first built, the building will have a blue coat of arms sign by the door. If it has been modified in any way, somewhere on the facade will be a number with the last date of renovation. It's a gorgeous place to bike around (which we did for an evening - such a good time!) and enjoy the atmosphere. There is also a really nice biking path around the outside of the city. There are a couple nice parks as well - one is completely infested with swans, which sounds cool, but they destroyed the grass so you can't even go in really, and its pretty disgusting. Not to mention the fact that swans are really mean, and with the amount of tourists there, I bet there are a few swan attacks every year. The swan is the symbol of Brugge, and there is a long story behind that which you can look up if you really care that much.
Basically, you should probably move Belgium to the top of your European-countries-to-visit list, especially Brugge. You'll love it, I promise!