Bruges Baby!

Back at the end of March, Grandma came for a visit for N's birthday.  We decided to take advantage of her and E and I headed to Bruges for the weekend.  But boy, if there was a trip destined not to be, this was it!

First of all, a couple of weeks after I made the reservation, our hotel contacted me to say that they would be closing due to a "fungus" on their stairs.  Ewwwww.  They rescheduled us in a different hotel with no problems.  Then, 10 days before traveling to England, Grandma broke her leg, and came to us in a walking cast.  So, leaving her with a 2 and 3 year old for the whole weekend, didn't seem like the best plan.  

Then, E got sick, so I thought, OK, I can see the writing on the wall... and I cancelled our hotel room.  But thanks to good doctors, the next day he was feeling better and thought he could travel again!  But we still had the Grandma-is-in-a-cast problem.  So I started searching for family hotel rooms, and thought we would just take the boys with us.  Unfortunately when I called the ferry company to add the boys to our reservation, they told me the ferry was full!  They didn't even have room for a 2 and 3 year old!  So then Grandma insisted that she was fine to take the boys and we should just go.  And she did seem to be moving around quite well, so we decided to see if our hotel reservations were still available.  Of course they were not.  But after a little online searching I found another hotel in Bruges (this is our third booked now), and finally off we went.

But the trials weren't over yet.  Oh no, no more than 15 minutes from our house we ran into traffic and missed our ferry.  We were no where near Dover when our ferry left.  So I called the ferry company again, and we were rescheduled on the next ferry... which got us into Bruges well after 1 am.  But we did finally get there... and we did have a nice weekend away!  And Grandma did seem to do fine with a broken leg and my two very energetic boys.  We are model parents.

We finally made it!  Bruges is surrounded by a canal, and development has been limited inside the canal, which makes it a very quaint and traditional looking city.  Plus it's small and you can walk everywhere, which makes for great sight seeing.

The town square.  So cute.  Bruges is known for that stepped roof line.  They are called "step gables" and are very traditional there. 

Belguim is also known for its chocolate (obviously).  Yummy!  We sampled plenty... and brought plenty more home.  So we had to get a picture outside one of the many, many chocolate stores that lined the streets.

This is the belfry on the town square.  Of course we climbed to the top of it.  Would we ever go somewhere and not climb to the top of the highest structure around?  It was nice to not have the boys... the stairway was very, very narrow, and there is only one.  Meaning people were going up and down at the same time.  I had to plaster myself against a wall many times that morning!

The coolest part was not the view outside from the top, but the view inside.  We could see the mechanics of how the clock faces work, along with the bells installed in the 1700s.  It was pretty amazing to see how all the linkages worked.  We stayed up there long enough to hear the bells ring and see the mechanisms at work.

We also took a canal cruise... which we froze on!  But it was beautiful to see all the neat architecture.  But I really needed some hot chocolate after that!

Later than night we had dinner in a really, really cute restaurant.  Again, not at all kid friendly.  Not because of the menu (every dish came with fries... apparently the Belgians really like their fries, and they eat them with a fork and mayonnaise!) but because of the time.  The restaurant opened at 6:30 and did one seating all night long.  Our reservations were at 7 pm and we didn't leave until 10!  Yeah, we don't usually do three hour dinners in our house!

On the way home we had an amazing view of the white cliffs of Dover from the ferry.  We snapped this picture where you can see Dover Castle sitting on top of the cliffs.  You can see why this was such a formidable castle to attack!

Thanks Grandma for keeping the boys for us, we had a nice weekend!