Brugge, Belgium

For Valentine's Day, Ashley and I spent a romantic weekend in Brugge, Belgium. It is about a 1 hour train ride from Brussels. We went to a Flamenco show on Thursday night and then took the bus to Madrid. Then, the metro to the airport. Then, the plane to Brussels. And finally, the train to Brugge. It was really cold. I wore all the clothes I brought... every day. The trip consisted of a lot of EATING. We ate lots of chocolates, waffles, fries, more chocolate, pancakes, and pastries. While we wandered around to find the hostel, we stopped in a tea room for our first real Belgian waffels. It was a good first experience :) After we checked into the hostel, we took an hour power nap and then went exploring. It was freezing, but really fun. We just wandered the streets and stopped in a bunch of chocolate stores. We generally could buy 100 grams (so usually 6-8 truffles) for between 2-3 euros. Plus, sometimes we got free samples. Friday evening we had a really nice, fancy, warm meal at our hostel. The downstairs has a really nice restaurant that was actually recommended on our tourist map. On Saturday we went to a Flea Market, The Church of Our Lady where this is one of the few Michelangelo sculptures outside of Italy, St. John's Hospital, and then we took a tour of a brewer! And this was all before noon! The brewery tour was probably my favorite. There used to be hundreds of breweries in Brugge, but this is the only one left. We saw new and old equipment, learned a lot about brewing, and tried a free sample (gross). The coolest part about it was that we were in a really old building with very small, narrow hallways and even smaller doors. We had to go up and down the narrowest steps, so we went backwards. We actualyl went up to the roof for a little story-telling by our very animated (possibly a little tipsy) tour guide and to get a great view of the city. After the tour, we had lunch at a pancake house. Then, we walked a bit to the other side of the city to visit the windmills, the Jerusalem Church, and the Lace Museum. The Lace Museum was really cool. We went to teh demonstration room where there were about a dozen women between the ages of 60-100 hand-making lace. It was really intense. Took a power nap and then met up with some people we had met during the day for dinner. However, we didn't really take Valentine's Day into account, so we ended up eating fries and croquettes from the famous dueling fry carts. That night, we went to this bar place that had BOARD GAMES! We played scrabble with another study abroad student and Ukranian we met. haha, playing scrabble with someone who can sort of speak english, but definitely can't spell was interesting. So, he was on my team and the game ended up being pretty comical. The trip back to Sevilla was very long and tiring, but we made it back to our apartment at 4:15 AM on sunday night/monday morning with classes on monday.

I highly recommended going to Belgium. Seriously. Brugge was nice and not overwhelming because it was smaller. All the buildings were beautiful. Plus, everything was even better for the big Valentine's Day. There were cute little tea rooms and small, intimate restaurants all over the place. Brugge doesn't get many tourists, so they welcome them pleasantly. Many people speak English which was a nice break from espanol. It was the kind of little city that is most enjoyed by just wandering around and exploring. Even though it was really cold (1 degree celcius when we landed in Brussels in the afternoon), the sun was shining and we had enough layers. I think this will probably end up being my favorite trip!

Buildings in the city center. It reminded me a lot of Holland.

Ashley and I enjoying our amazing date on Friday night.

The clock tower at night.

Ash and I on the roof of the brewery.

Me on the bridge. There were canals and bridges through the whole city.

Me being a windmill!