Bruges, Belgium

On this day in 1964: Jack Ruby sentenced to death for the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald.

(This is a long post, so get yourself a cuppa before you settle in for a read! Photos are at the bottom if you want to skip the reading)

Day 1 – Friday
Finally I’ve made it back to my PC after a fantastic weekend away for my birthday! On Friday morning at 6am, we set off to Brussells in Belgium by Eurostar. After a late night on Thursday (dinner at a comedy club with friends), I didn’t see much of our journey. I woke up 10 minutes from Brussells and still thought we were in the UK! I hadn’t even noticed that we’d passed under the English Channel!

From Brussells, it was another hour by train to Bruges which is near the Belgian North Sea coast. We arrived around 12.15pm, checked into our hotel and then went looking for lunch. Lunch was short and so was sightseeing ‘cos B and I were headed for the pub!

Now, let me give you some background on Belgium. Not a very big country, they have been invaded by most European countries in their time. They are famous for 4 main products: Lace, chocolate, Tintin and most importantly, BEER! The country produces over 800 different beers and B and I were planning on tasting as many as possible!

After visiting 3 bars/coffee shops, we discovered “‘t Brugs beertje“, a pub that stocks over 300 Belgian beers. If any of you ever make it to Bruges, make sure you drop in! The girls challenged us to drink 100 different beers and we were up for it!

Four hours later, the hunger kicked in so off we went to a local restaurant to try another Belgian specialty, mussells. We were a little disappointed with the food, but by 10pm and 17 beers later, we were in bed!

Day 2 – Saturday
By 10.30am on Saturday morning, we’d had breakfast and were climbing the 366 steps of the Belfry Tower. By midday, we were eating belgian waffles and drinking our first beers. We had realised that we would never make 100, so had settled on the more realistic target of 50.

The girls wanted to do some sight-seeing, so B (who had by now picked up the nickname of Makatini – long story) had to put off our beer drinking for another 4 hours! We took a guided tour in a canal boat, visited Our Lady’s Church which houses a sculpture of the Madonna by Michelangelo and had rabbit for lunch while all the time it snowed.

By 4pm, B and I were bored so we sent the girls off shopping and headed back to “‘t Brugs beertje“. This time we went all out. Yesterday we had started on the weaker beers (in Belgium this means anything under 7% alcohol) but today we were up for the hard stuff and we were soon drinking Bush (13%) and Rochefort 10 (11.3%).

By 11pm, B was falling off his chair, so we decided to call it a day. We’d managed 36 different beers! One last stop on the way home for hot chocolate (to keep the girls happy of course) before hitting the hay.

Day 3 – Sunday
After another early breakfast, we caught the train back to Brussells. A whistlestop tour taking in The Grand Place and the Mannekin Pis and, of course, one more beer before catching the Eurostar back home.

What a weekend! Looking forward to trying the other 760 Belgian brews!

Chat soon,
Del

PS: Thanks to all for the birthday wishes via email and text and a special thanks to Deb, B & I for making my holiday weekend extra fun!

Beer number 5 & 6

Inside “‘t Bruges beertje”

View of the Belfry from the canal boat

View of canal from the Belfry Tower

Klein Jaap enjoys a beer or three!

Bush is the strongest beer!

All 4 of us enjoying “‘t Brugs beertje”

The Mannekin Pis in Brussells