Chris arrived on Thursday morning Dec. 4th. After a few naps during the day, he was ready to attend my "Leaving Do" for work. About 20 co-workers came for my leaving drinks at the "Old Firehouse in Hammersmith". After that the three of us and one co-worker headed back to Chiswick for dinner at a Thai restaurant and then for one more drink across the street. At this point we were all getting excited for Bruges that Chris and Scott asked me what people from Belgium are called. I said "Flems/Flemmish". They both started laughing and said we didn't know so just decided to call them "Brussilians". We headed home for bed only to get an early wake-up call for our 5:50am train to Brussels.
Friday morning we made our way to St. Pancras and got on the train, relaxed and slept for awhile. We arrived Brussels and made our way on the Metro to the main square. First stop was food since we didn't really have breakfast at that point. So what other way to start your vacation that with a hot Belgium waffle???
After having a little breakfast and coffee we walked around the main square. They had a live manger. See the sheep???
In case you didn't know where we were, Scott so cleverly snuck the book in as I was taking a photo.
What trip to Brussels would be complete without the Manekin Pis???
We then decided to take an earlier train to Bruges to start our weekend festivities. We got back to the main station and went to the platform to find the train was PACKED. We had free tickets to Bruges through Eurostar, but decided to pay the extra 6Euros a person for first class where we could actually sit and relax.
Once we got into Bruges we decided we would walk the mile to our hotel. You can see in the first picture below Chris and Scott walking with our luggage. The 2nd and 3rd picture are of the streets of Bruges. We were slowly starting to step into the Fairytale Christmas setting!
We were all a bit tired so we decided to go grab some quick lunch and then go back to the hotel and take a nap. We started the evening off at this bar that served over 400 Belgium beers and if that sign didn't say "come have a drink" I don't know what did. So we started off with a few beers.
This was Bush Noel (obvious from the name, a Holiday ale). Chris and my favorite from the whole trip.
We stopped in the main square for a few pictures before dinner. The square was all lit up and looked like a Winter Wonderland, without snow.
After the photo op, we went to dinner just down the street and had a local cuisine. Afterwards, we went right around the corner to a recommended bar. We sat in front of the fireplace and played scrabble and had a few more beers! What a relaxing night!
The following morning, we had another waffle for breakfast and then decided to let tour guide Chris and his Eyewitness News book take Scott and I on a 90minute walking tour of Bruges. Along the way we saw numerous historical sites and picturesque areas:
The world’s first stock exchange, Huis ter Beurze, was at No 35 (pictures below):
We continued along and kind of got lost but found out streets eventually. We got to see some interesting things though along our "detour".
We finally made it to our pit stop along the route which is the oldest pub in town. We stopped in for a beer.
We kept walking after our pit stop and saw some more of Bruges:
We lucked out in our walking tour because Sinterclaus was getting in his carriage for a parade!
After making our way back to the starting point, we stopped off for a thirst quencher (a.k.a beer). We met a lovely English couple and shared a pint with them. We stayed for a few more after they left. From there we made our way through the main square and stopped at one of the booths for some mulled wine. We kept on walking and made our way down to an outdoor bar on one of the canals and had a few more beers. It was then time to head back to the hotel to get ready for our Mussels and Frites dinner.
Chris demonstrating "This is Bruges"
We had mussels and frites for dinner on Saturday night. They weren't anything to rave home about so were a little disappointed but had a nice meal anyway. After dinner we went to the club that was underneath the bar from the night before and got a table and sat and relaxed for awhile. It started to get busy around 11ish and the floor was filling up with dancers. We had a good laugh at some people. We then headed upstairs for a nightcap and back to the hotel.
Sunday we were up and off to the train to Brussels and then a change onto the Eurostar back to London. We left chris in Hammersmith and he headed off to the airport and Scott and I headed home for our last 3 nights in London.
We have decided that we will do an annual weekend trip to Bruges as a Christmas Kick-off! We hope that our group of 3 last year expands to a few more this year. Pack your bags for December 3-6th for Christmas Kick-off 2 with the Brussilians!
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