Waffles, chocolate,
Christmas beer, cherry beer, honey beer, beer made by monks, frolicking
gnome beer, pink elephant beer, cookie beer, horse drawn carriages, swans, fries, canals, boat rides, lace, oilleballen (oily
balls, yeah they’re as life altering as they sound), chocolate museums, beer tastings, Flemishe
Karbonade (the best stew evarrr), pub crawls and, well, the star of the show… a
vial of Jesus’ blood. Yeah, you heard me. Drops of Jesus’ blood in a little glass vial that you can go and see being blessed by the
priest, that is, of course, if your new (ex)friend doesn’t ditch you and run
off to the Basillica of the Holy blood blessing ceremony without you that only
happens once a day, yeah, then you don’t get to see it, do you? No, you don’t, you go all the
way to Bruges and you don’t even so much as get a GLIMPSE of Jesus’ blood.
Shortly after Rob the Dog had the privilege of seeing the blood we went on a
canal tour of Bruges, he was so smug it was almost unbearable.
“Hey Rob, aren’t you freezing?”
“Not really, no. I suppose it’s just, well,
all the adrenaline from seeing
Jesus’ blood, I’m pretty warm actually. Wow, it was amazing. Really amazing.
Wow. Are you cold? Sheesh. I’m BOILING”
“Hey Rob, should we go see Michael Angelos’s
Madonna and Child sculpture?”
“Uh, no, no I don’t think so, I mean, I’ve
seen Jesus’ blood. I don't really need to see anything else, ever again, do I? I mean, I SAW Jesus’ blood. So, I think I’m okay
actually. You go ahead.”
“Well, can you at least tell me what it was
like?”
“Yeah, I suppose. It was, well, it was
incredible. They showed it to me and then they were like, Rob, would you like to take it home with you and I was like
oh, no, I think I’m okay thanks. Yeah, it was life changing, really, just mind
blowing”
Despite running off and seeing the blood of
the Holy Christ without me, Rob was a pretty good tour guide. Over a glass or
ten of delicious beer in the Bauhaus pub he planned the most epic tour of
Bruges for the following day.
It went like this:
1. Jesus’ blood
2. The fries museum (Jesus would have wanted
this)
3. Canal tour
4. Waffles/conditional vomit
5. Beer tour
6.Buy all the beers, all of them. Every
single one.
Bruges is one of the best places I’ve ever
been. I LOVED Paris but Bruges is more my kind of place and it was exciting
being there because I had NO idea what to expect and I’ve never really heard
anything about it. Whereas with Paris, I’ve been seeing pictures of it my whole
life, I felt like I had already been there. Bruges is really quaint and pretty,
and they have Christmas beer, I mean,
why would you WANT to go anywhere else? They speak Flemish which seems to me
like a mixture between Afrikaans and German, they have THE best accent when
they speak English, the BEST, it’s really entertaining. I think if I was a town
I would be Bruges.. THAT’S how awesome it is.
I stayed at the Bauhaus
Hostel which was GREAT. They
have their own awesome little bar with LOTS of different beers and the best
atmosphere, they have old lamps from the train station in Paris, old mirrors
and a massive clock that turns backwards because, well, it just turns
backwards. They do beer tastings, you can hire bikes, they do free walking
tours, pub crawls and lots of other fun stuff. I was a bit sad to leave Bruges
but I’m almost positive I’ll be back one day.
Oh, and Pingu LOVED the beer in Bruges too, and the oilleballen,
he was a bit of a glutton, actually. Every time I turned around he’d JUMP into my beer and start chugging away, I
lifted up his hat and inside,
insiiiiiiide, he had started stashing bits of oilleballen and hula hoop chips.
The slotter. Look at him… he was SO badly behaved.
Lord only KNOWS what he’ll be like in Amsterdam…
