We took the Busabout bus to Bruges from Paris at 8am in the morning and arrived at Bruges at about 1pm. Our hostel was about a 20 min walk from where the bus dropped us off so we were able to walk through the town and see what it was like.
Bruges was a beautiful little town, the building looked so old but where so nice. We found out later that the buildings had all been renovated and done up to look old.
Bruges was the home of the lots and lots of chocolate and beer so we were both happy. The first night we just walked around the town until we found somewhere nice to eat and then went home as it was raining and freezing cold. They also love there hot chips in Bruges, they have a Fries Museum we didnt go to it though!!!
We had to have a little retail therapy here too because the weather was so cold and Jarrod and I had only brought summer clothes, clothes were pretty expensive so we had to do a bit of bargain shopping.
There were 850 local beers in Belgium so Jarrod tried to sample as much as possible!! There was 1 nice one that we liked and it was called Jupiler. It was just like a Corona but a bit stronger. The locals drank a lot of this too. We had some samplers at our hostel to of cherry beer - a lot of girls drank this beer and also the dark like guiness beer - we stayed away from these.
We went to the chocolate Museum and to the Beer Museum. The chocolate museum was pretty good, they had massive chocolate scultures all throughout the museum but god knows how long they had been there for cause it did stink a little. We watched a short film on chocolate and where it came from which was really interesting, i didnt think there was so much history behind chocolate. The chocolate was nice but you cant beat Cadbury and Cadbury just isnt the same over here is a darker chocolate. After the chocolate Museum we went to the Beer Museum, it cost 4,50Euro to get in and u got a free beer at the end. The tour went for about1 hour and was spoken in 3 languages, French, English and Dutch. The Beer Museum was quite sad, we learnt that in the 1900s workers were put in rooms that were as hot as 80-90 degrees celsius and that little kids had to clean the big tanks which was almost in the same conditions but with harmful toxics. They rotated every 15 mins or so. They also used to get drunk all the time as they all had no money for food so they just drank at work as they saw that as there meal so then they could provide for their family. Also beer was serviced as water in hospitals to the poor as the water was too dirty and wine was serviced to the rich in hospitals. Enough about the sad stuff.... the beer at the end was nice but unfiltered so it was very cloudy and had a very bitter taste to it. I couldnt drink mine so Jarrod was happy with 2.
We really spent the rest of our time in Bruges just relaxing and eating. The weather wasnt all that good when we were there so that was all we could do. Bruges was a really nice town and would be absolutely pumping in their busy seasons, the canals were beautiful to walk along at night and the windmills were huge and amazing.
Apart from the Beer and Chocolate the highlight of Bruges was the Toy Shops. These shops were old school toy shops and had all those wooden toys that are so hard to buy these days. Jarrod and I spent ages in the shops.
