Brugge

We had to buy our tickets last minute, but thankfully flying to Brussels from Rome was the cheapest flight I could buy for those dates. So we land in Brussels after an easy drive up to Rome Ciampino, where the parking lot is closer to the gate than the check-in counter is at FCO. Also the airport code is CIA, and the first syllable sounds like “champ,” and I think that’s awesome.

Sitting on the train from Brussels to Bruges, we both comment how similar the countryside is to Wisconsin. The buildings, of course, retain that European flavor—that distinct foreignness to remind us again that (pinch) we’re in Europe, in Belgium. Deciduous trees growing in thick, rich soil brings a feeling of home while the thin, watery sunlight is a welcome relief from a Mediterranean August.

The Flanders hotel, in Brugge, is the best hotel we’ve stayed in yet. The beds are soft, the breakfast enormous, the pool sufficient for a windmill-weary three-year-old who left her house at 8 and took a series of cars, airplanes, buses, trains and taxis before sitting in a stroller for a while.

Our sunset windmill walk calms Julie’s and my frenetic pulse. Julie falls in love immediately. Old historic Bruges has a trail along the surrounding canal, and on the north eastern path you find four giant windmills all in a row. A lawn stretches between them, inviting picnics, Frisbee or, today, a group of dog lovers exercising their pets.

How much is our impression of a place colored by the weather? London, in the sunlight, like when we visited, is unspeakably amazing. Pisa, in the rain, was worth a few pictures and a swift exeunt stage left. Brugge, with her cool summer showers, horse-drawn carriage rides past “God haus”-es where medieval nobility provided free lodging to peasants willing to pray them into heaven, sunny boat rides beneath the bridge leading to the swan-filled convent Julie will join if I break our agreement and die first, and her winding streets filled to overflowing with chocolate, waffles, beer, French fries, and chocolate, ranks easily among our new favorite places on earth. We are definitely in the right place at the right time.

Rick Steves told me that Bruges is a touristy place where you don’t mind rubbing elbows with a bunch of other tourists. If I do nothing more with this blog than to validate the recommendations of this incomparable traveler, from where I sit that would be okay. For you, dear reader, if that happens, just go watch his PBS shows.

About half the streets are bumpy stroller rides. The convent I mentioned earlier is open to visitors, but Aryn is sleeping and the cobblestones are too uneven to stroll through. So if I die and Aryn is grown, you can go visit Julie there and see for yourself. You may not recognize her, because she’ll have gained about 200 lbs by the time you catch up with her, and she’ll probably have finished the whole chocolate statue of Barack Obama.

Our dinner, at an Irish pub staffed by real Irishmen, is fantastic. They serve us delicious food with salad such as we haven’t had in quite some time. My Leffe beer has a pleasant aftertaste, the fries (a food invented in Belguim, which is why we call them French fries) are divine, and the whole culinary experience is totally lost on Aryn. But she manages to eat enough to “earn” dessert (parents, don’t judge me), and wouldn’t you believe it, the chocolate mousse steals the whole show. We have to physically restrain our child so she doesn’t inhale it so fast she chokes, and I have to strain myself to remember much else about that dinner, so consumed is my mind with swimming in that heavenly confection.