I’ve found a new favorite port! A week or so ago, Stephanie, Cassandra and I talked about going into Brugge, Belgium to get some waffles and today we were so excited to follow through with those plans. At 10:00AM this morning, the three of us along with Carly, Jess and Gabe met on the gangway and headed towards the shuttle bus. We are actually docked in Zeebrugge, Belgium so we had to take a few different modes of transportation to get into the actual city of Brugge – first the shuttle from the ship to the Blankenberge train station (only around 10 minutes away from the ship) and then an 11 minute train ride from the train station to Brugge. Here’s Cass and I on the train!
We sat for awhile at the table while I played with my camera (my SLR is giving me an error message and I can’t bring it back to life :( and everyone ate their food. These two guests from the ship sat down next to us and really starting bothering us about the ships internet and complaining, so we packed up and headed out to explore. The street that ran perpendicular to the café hosted lots of little chocolate shops – but only a few in comparison to the 100’s around the city itself. I found this horse fountain and it made me think of Evan and Piper!
Twenty minutes later, we found our first of several food stops along the way (this was definitely not one of my healthy eating days and was 100% not on any diet! BUT – I only live once) where we grabbed some Belgian fries. Four of us got a “pack” of them – I had mine with curry Ketchup (yes, I have finally learned to love curry!).
After a bit longer of walking and finishing up our fries, three of us (Carly, Cass and myself) saw the boats going down the river and decided that we should give it a shot. Along the water, there were several little sales stations set up where you could purchase tickets for a 30 minute boat ride up and down the river(?) and see a bit of Brugge from the water as well as get a bit of historical information. You know me and my bargaining – I got us all kid rates for being crew! The boat pier was so beautiful with lots of flowers lining the railings on the dock.
Thirty minutes later, we had seen the entire waterway packed full of old, beautiful and colorful buildings. We saw 140+ swans flooding the water, a few interesting statues, the dog they refer to as the “King of Brugge" and we basked in the sun of the perfect summer day! I must have said what an beautiful day it was close to 50 times throughout the day…I’ve really grown a huge appreciation over the last year for being outside. I eat every single meal outside as well as read each night outside – I just find the fresh air “cleansing” in a way. I credit Misty with this newfound appreciation!
When the three of us finished our “cruise”, we had to go find Jess, Gabe and Stephanie – all who had gone their own direction to walk around town on their own. Once we all met up, Jess suggested we go grab a beer somewhere. A left, right and “where the hell are we?” later – we found a bar that boasted a banner claiming that they had 100 different beers and WI-FI….PERFECT. We sat outside and a red headed kid came out to take our order. This carrot-top (sorry, Chris) was so rude – he had no interest in answering any of our questions and the minute he brought our beers out- he asked for the money and told us we had to pay right away. Apparently, we didn’t look trustworthy. I ordered a Peach beer along with Cass and Jess. It was alright – still tasted like beer no matter how much peach flavoring was in it and I don’t do beer (unless absolutely necessary). The most fascinating part of this bar was that for each of the 100 beers they had, they had 100 different glasses to match. Gabe ordered a beer that was HUGE – so large that he couldn’t hold the glass up with one hand for very long!
My beer was the “Peche mel Bush”. I know this is dirty – but we kept joking about how much head the beer had on it. Things only got raunchy from there. Here’s the conversation that took place between Jess and I.
Jess – “Damn, Peach bush has a lot of head on it.” and me responding with “Yeah – and it’s not going down very fast.” …tehehe.
Anyways….I had to start heading back to the ship because I had to work at 5 and desperately needed to catch the 3:36 train back to Blankenberge. Cass and I still felt the need to eat a waffle, so we picked one up at this stand…
It wasn’t the freshest like we wanted, but still tasty with the chocolate and strawberry syrup on top. A true Belgian waffle is a bit more like a cake consistency instead of the way we have them. Even when they put them into the waffle iron, the consistency of the batter is completely different. Ours is more of a liquid and here they put a ball of dough into the waffle iron. Next time we’re here – I’m going for the fresh one straight off the iron!
We might have gotten that yummy waffle, but we didn’t get the 3:36 train. I started to stress a bit – but I REALLY started to pray that there would be another train shortly after so that I would not be late for work. As soon as we arrived at the station, I saw there was a 3:55 train which would still cut it very close but at least it wouldn’t be late. At 4:40, I walked into my cabin, changed and arrived at the Culinary Arts Center just in time! Phew!
Today was an incredible day in so many ways – I took many deep breaths of fresh air, remembered how blessed I am, got really excited about these upcoming adventures (I’ll post more about those soon!) and just remembered why I do what I do. This evening, I sat outside and had great conversation with a good friend which just topped the day off fantastically!
Quote of the Day: "The laws of gravity cannot be held responsible for people falling in love." - Albert Einstein
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