Bruges

So, in our long backlog of blog posts, I haven't mentioned a trip to Bruges a few weekends ago. It was a short trip, and the major focus was drinking delicious Belgian beer.

I hopped on the Eurostar Saturday morning with some work friends for Brussels, then a short inter-city train onwards to Bruges.

The whole city felt so true to itself more than anything. There are some European (and American) cities that will play up their touristy areas: setting up a antiques market, restoring a castle or church, marking up food prices by 300%, etc. When we were walking through Bruges, the whole town simply felt old and inviting. There wasn't one part that was dressed up over the others, it just all seemed so uniformly perfect.

And then there's the beer!

I had researched a bar that was supposed to have 300 different beers available ('t Bruges Beertje ... which quickly became "The Bruges Beetle"), and we luckily stumbled that way early Saturday afternoon. We weren't quite ready to dive into all 300 just yet, so we had a few pints and then headed to dinner. After dinner we found another bar that served over 400 different beers! What luck.

Sunday was much more relaxed. We found the Brouwerij De Halve Maan, and went on a great tour of their brewing process. We ate lunch at the brewery, enjoyed some of their delicious liquid offerings, then headed for the Eurostar back home.

It was a very fun weekend, and a great excuse to get out of London for a short little trip to "the continent."

Here's the recap of pictures (I tried to take a picture of each beer I had, but that became more and more difficult as the night wore on).