Bruges, Belgium

This was maybe my favorite of all our adventures in Europe to date! It was such a relaxing trip! We were only there part of 2 days, but we were able to see most of what we wanted. We first went to the Choco-Story Museum, which is the entire history of chocolate starting with the Aztecs and Mayan's use of the cocoa bean all the way to the present production of chocolate in Belgium. There was a demonstration of how the Belgian praline is made at the end of the tour and samples, of course.

A statue carved out of chocolate

A statue of the Madonna and Child made of white chocolate

The demonstration

Then we went on a boat ride in the canals. This was so fun! We rode past swans and all kinds of historic sites and buildings. There were houses backed right up to the canal with little verandas. That would be so fun to live right off the canal like that!

Above is a picture of our view of the verandas backed up to the canals

I loved the swans!

We went to Mass in a Jesuit Cathedral. It was beautiful!

Then the search for mussels began! Brian was absolutely determined to eat mussels and everywhere we went they were sold out of them. Finally, we found them and he enjoyed them thoroughly! I, on the other hand, could barely stand the smell. :)

Before

After

Then there was the beer which I, obviously, could care less about. However, Brian was obsessed with them. Here is his picture diary of Belgium beers.

Here I am big and tired

While Brian went up the over 300 steps to the Bell tower with 47 bells, I was able to do some shopping and it was so much better than anywhere else so far. I got a chocolate dog for the girls and some rain coats too. Since this area of Belgium is also known for it's lace, there were baptism gowns everywhere. I finally found one that Brian agreed was not too girly (girls and boys in Europe wear the same gowns) and bought it along with a lace cross and Madonna and Child to sew onto the gown. I will put pictures of that soon (along with the nursery which is almost complete).

The Bell Tower

A view from the top of the Bell Tower