There's chocolate on my lace!

Tuesday 29^th April

Back to Belgium again today. A few comments on Belgium. Their motorways are great and easy to get places quickly. The interchanges seemed to have been well planned out and not too much lane changing at the last minute. Their town roads though are crap – they are made out of concrete slabs so every second you go kerthump across a join. In France it was easy, town = 50k, but here in Belgium it seems to be less clear and so far today we have seen a lot of 70k sections of road between towns.

Bicycles – there really aren't that many in France, but here in Belgium there are thousands of them. Yesterday we saw a lot of tour groups on bicycle around some of the places we visited and today we have been in Brugge and the bicycle is the major form of transport.

Brugge – I really like the feel of this city. We followed Dora in and at the last turn we accidentally turned into a car park. We weren't 100% sure how close we were to the actual centre of town but a couple parking next to us spoke English and were able to tell us that we were right where we needed to be to do the town centre. The day started out overcast and with showers but not too wet to walk the streets. We arrived in the city square and noticed a City Tour bus so we decided to do that for a bit of a look around. This was a nice short intro to the city.

Buildings around the central square in Brugge.

The town hall in Brugge.

We didn't do the canal boat ride but the canals looked lovely.

A lot more people in the afternoon after the rain stopped.

The tour took us past the chocolate museum which was somewhere we planned to visit so we did the chocolate tour after we got off the bus. This was not as good a tour as we had heard and it was packed with groups of school kids who all seemed to have questionnaires to fill in at the museum. Not a lot of tastings either which is why we had to buy some chocolate later.

So, what is Brugge famous for? Lace and chocolates! We’ve added a bit of each to the luggage. The lady in the shop assured us that the chocolates would keep for 6-8 weeks. Really?

Labs never pass up food.
Watching every mouthful of ice cream.

Don't we all wish we had one of these at times.

Rob went to a Salvador Dali exhibition while I went to a lace shop and a craft shop. The lace typical to Brugge is different to Alencon lace and different to bobbin lace. I also managed to pick up a ball of sock yarn so more socks to knit when I get home.

Salvador Dali.

Tonight we are in another B&B not far from Brugge. A bit hard to find when Dora doesn’t know of the address but we found it without too much hassle. I’m not sure if it is the norm but so far in Belgium (or at least Brugge) we have found that most people in shops speak English and our host at the B&B also speaks very good English. Makes it a bit easier for us as, but we now have to break the habit of speaking French!!

Home for the night.
Kurt has pet goats including 2 two week old kids.
Very cute! 

At the suggestion of Kurt (our host) we went to the restaurant called 't Schildersverdiet whose specialty is ribs. We each had ribs - about 12 of them in a row that went from one end of the plate to the other. They were served with a huge potato and salad. When we were just over 1/2 way through the waitress asked if she should do some more. No - we had enough. Apparently it was all you can eat and she had known people to have 8 serves!! We watched as those around us had second and third helpings! Made me feel ill just to think about it.

Try pronouncing that after a few drinks!

These are the ribs!!

There is a canal opposite the restaurant and these barges
were heading both ways on the canal.
Some were loaded to the gunnels with sand.
Canal goes from Brugge to Ghent.