The forecast for today was solid rain and when I woke up it was pouring, and didn’t stop whilst we had breakfast here in the apartment. It was also cold, so I’d pretty much mentally already written the day off and thought to myself we will be lucky if we can just find a nice cafe to grab a coffee, maybe a waffle then come back and watch Netflix for the day.
The rain actually started to ease off just as we walked outside, so we bought a bus ticket for the day and took it to the centre of Bruges and went to the Lace museum which had some excellent displays on the history of lace making in the region. It’s incredibly detailed slow work and some of the videos they showed of experts working by hand were just a blur of hands and fingers. Amazing stuff
Before we actually got into the old town, we had to wait for a barge to cross through the lock near our apartment.
After the lace museum we needed coffee so found a place near the centre that did coffee and lunch. Coffee was not the greatest I’ve had but wasn’t terrible.
By now the rain has actually gone and blue sky had made an appearance which was a real surprise so we high tailed it over to the canal to do a canal cruise before the rain returned. This was the highlight of the day, it really is a pretty town from the water and the bridges are low. Be prepared to duck in some sections if you are tall. Not that we really had to worry
Next we went to the Friets (chip) museum, which if I’m honest is a bit kitschy and overrated. You learn a bit about the history of the potato and how central fries are to the culture of Belgium. Best bit is they have a restaurant in the basement which does amazing chips. In Belgium and the Netherlands Mayo is the condiment of choice and it’s delicious on chips. They also do an amazing curry ketchup here. We all shared a serving of traditional chips. They are as good as they claim.
So what do you do after a serving of chips cooked in beef lard? You follow it up with a waffle chaser to make sure you have all the main food groups covered. We had strawberries on one of the waffles, and that’s a fruit so we must be doing ok
We decided to head back to the apartment for a while before heading out for dinner. We had some amazing food worthy of its own blog post, coming soon.
It's all about the coffee 