What I saw in Brugge, Gent, and Brussels -

This weekend was a weekend away to Belgium :)
Eline, Rebekah, and I saw three cities... in two days. It was quite impressive. We ate a lot of good Belgian chocolate, waffles, and fries while we traveled. All in all it was a success and a lot of fun.
Now onto the question of ... what exactly did you see? This is a questions I am hoping to answer with this blog to help you and I know - what exactly I did see because I like trips that are both fun and a little educational!
In Brugge we saw:
The Beginhof - a monastery - a night (on the right)- along with live nuns (the benedictine sisters) celebrating their daily liturgy. Picture above shows the monastery with its baroque style.

We saw the Burg Square where the "old gothic town hall" was located (on the left) also at night.

We went to Halve Moon Brewery where we go a tour along with a free glass of unfiltered blond beer. :) At this brewery the tour guide stated that the Belgians like a lot of froth on the top of their beer so one is never to complain that there is too much on the top of their glass. While waiting for the froth to go down - the tour guide said one should enter a relationship with their beer and get to know him or her. What do you think?
Here is us with our free glass of Brugse-zot: see picture above.

One of the first places we wanted to see was the markt - the center of town. The beautiful 12th century Belftry tower is located here. It is also magnificent to see at night.

As a nurse, of course I wanted to check out an old mid-evil hospital turned museum called sint-jan hospitaamuseum - unfortunately we did not go to the museum but the outside was so neat and a little... eerie to walk around.

We checked out a cute little museum called choco-story where we got to grab a handful of chocolate before we learned about the history of chocolate, watch a lady demonstrate how to "make" chocolate, and sample more chocolate :)

We also checked out the Jan Van Eyck Plein (his statue is in the picture with me) where we saw the oldest bridge in Brugge and walked down Spanjaardstraat to see house number 9 where St. Ignatius of Loyala stayed on visits to Brugge. SO Cool!

At the end of the day we had to check out BrugsBeertje to sample some beer and eat cheese!

Then... we moved on to the city of Gent!
We saw the Belfort tower, the Graslei, the Sint-Niklaaskerk, and the most exciting of all - the Gravensteen mid-evil castle!

Gent didn't impress too much after the castle and we couldn't find a place to eat a good waffle...so we left for Brussels! The capital of Belgium.
Brussels did not disappoint. We were there a little short of three hours but it was enough to see what we wanted - the Grand Place and of course the Manneken Pis. After sightseeing a bit we found what Brussel local recommended to be the best Belgian waffles around at Dandoy. YES YES YES! Highly recommended. Take a look at that delicious - ness. That is it. Right there. The end of the Belgian tour and I doubt I will ever go back - but it was great to see once!
I have many more stories of our trip but it would take SO long to describe every detail.
When we got back to Holland it was snowing so beautifully in Zwolle - maybe we can go skating on the canals next weekend!
That's all for now! We go to Amsterdam tomorrow so I will blog about that next :)
Have a great Monday!