Day 6: Bruges- Chocolate, Waffles, and More Beer!

The girls and I got up early enough to get breakfast at the hostel, then we went looking for the De Halve Brewery. We bought tickets for their noon tour, and had a little bit of time to kill before then. So... we went chocolate shopping! Here are a few pics from the morning:




















Then on to the brewery tour of the only remaining brewery operating in Bruges, including panoramic views from their rooftop, and a nice cold beer at the end of the tour!




















By this time we were all starving, so we made our way to a cheap pasta place that Lizzy had heard about. 4€ for a HUGE bowl of spaghetti with meat sauce and a heaping mound of cheese on top. I wish all of my meals were this cheap and tasty!


We also found a pretty funny chocolate shop...





I bought some really good chocolates, with flavors like chili-lemon, salted caramel, cabernet sauvignon, caramel apple, and a cute little hazelnut hedgehog.








We parted ways with Lizzy, and Fiona and I continued to walk around the city hunting for souvenirs and beer. Luckily, we found both! We had a nice walk along the river, found an artists' market, and just soaked up the atmosphere.











Then we went to a fantastic place called 2Be that had an enormous wall of beer, and stayed for a few hours and tried as many as we could!




















That last one was served in a coconut shell bowl and was freakin' delicious... really hope I get to have that again one day! We stayed until the place closed. Yep! Shut 'er down! Literally were the last ones to leave! Then we had a serious hankerin' for some waffles, because we needed something in our stomachs to absorb all that beer. It's probably a good thing we had such a big spaghetti lunch! After buying a few Bruges beer mug souvenirs, we found the best-smelling waffle stand I have ever encountered. I got mine with strawberries, bananas, whipped cream, and white chocolate sauce. Hooray for Belgian waffles!








After a quick nap back at the hostel, we were on a mission to find banana beer, seemingly the only beer Fiona hadn't tried yet. Two other girls from our hostel, sisters Georgie and Laura from London, decided to join us. With the help of our hostel's bartender, we were on the right track- to a place called 't Brugs Beertje, aka Beer Heaven amongst backpackers. And they had the banana beer! And passionfruit, and strawberry, and raspberry, and black currant, and peach, and literally hundreds of non-fruity beers as well. It was a really cozy little place and I'd love to go back one day!





So with the banana beer mission accomplished, we went back to the hostel and I had my last night's sleep in Bruges, ready to move on to Amsterdam the next day!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad