In Bruges, No One Can Hear You Scream

I know I said my next post was going to be about how I burned the sausage, but I decided to interrupt a bit to tell you about our weekend. There are pictures!

For our anniversary, Hunter and I decided to spend the weekend in Bruges, Belgium. We had thought about going to Paris, but then decided that was a little overwhelming for just a few days. Bruges turns out to be a pretty good spot for a weekend, because there isn't just tons of stuff to do. It apparently gets very busy during the summer and there are a lot of English tourists there, so we had no problems with language or anything. The most famous thing in Bruges is probably the "Belfort," a giant bell tower.

Sadly, we left our actual camera in New Orleans, so all of the pics I have are phone pics. Anyway, you can climb up the stairs to get a view from the top of the tower. There are 366 steps, and I have a feeling that if this were a landmark in America, pregnant women would be at least discouraged from doing it, but I managed. Here is one of the views from the top:

We ate kind of a lot in Bruges, of varying degrees of quality/expensiveness. One of the best meals was at a Flemish restaurant where I had the Flemish rabbit stew. It was basically a whole rabbit in a pot, needless to say I couldn't finish it but it was very tasty. The meat just literally fell off the bone. It was served over fries, because apparently Belgians just love fries. Hunter saw someone with mayonnaise just dripping off of their fries, which I am really glad I missed. Another local dish we tried was the "moules-frites," mussels with fries, which is also really good. And of course, we had waffles. Apparently Belgian waffles really are Belgian, but they are a little bit different from how we make them in America. The batter is much lighter, almost like if you put crepe batter in a waffle iron. Here is the lovely waffle I had one morning:

They also had lots of crepes, which was always translated as "pancakes." I guess they don't realize that crepe is also a thing in English, or maybe just in England (where more tourists come from I suppose) they don't make a distinction. I had this crepe on our last morning there:

We also got TONS of chocolate. We tried out several different chocolateries. Here is an idea of how much chocolate we got, but it really isn't all visible in this picture:

And Hunter got to try several different Belgian beers. I of course was a bit left out of that part of things, but no matter. We went to several museums, one featuring Dali, one with Picasso (and others) and another with various Belgian artists; their best pieces were the older Flemish ones. There are actually quite a few museums but those are just the ones we made time for.

One of the most surprising things was how the bikes and scooters go there. In many places, motorized scooters are on the sidewalks with the bikes. In either case, they are apt to run you down if you aren't careful. Even in the giant square, riding is permitted so you have to be careful where you are walking. Several times I jumped out of the way at what seemed like the last second.

Overall, Bruges was a nice little weekend. At the end, however, we couldn't help but feel as though we had basically gone to New Orleans and never left the French Quarter. I suppose it's fine for a first visit, but if we go again we may try to see if there is anything else outside that main square.

Next time, I really will tell about what happened with the sausage.