Bruges: Day 2

Soooo sorry for the long break.  Drew's whole fam was here all week and I didn't have much time to post anything - but now I'm here and ready to get caught up!  Back to Bruges!

Day 2.  Woke up, hit the bustling food market they have on Saturday mornings.  Lots of cool food items: fresh baked breads, exotic teas, rotisserie chickens turning on wall-to-wall spits, all kinds of fish, cheese, candy, and things I couldn't place.  Then we had brunch at a gorgeous little tea room, climbed the clock tower, all 366 tight, windy, dangerous steps of it; had a little canal boat tour, then spent the afternoon pub crawling and trying different beers.  Yum yum.  Here are some pics.

Lots o' Belgian teas.

Meat and fish and what not.

Candy!

Cheese!

Something I can't identify!

More meat.

Rotisserie chickens a'spinnin.  

Cool decorated flags flying in the streets.  An accordian!

A dress and pants flag!

Prestige, the lovely tea room where we ate a big sugary breakfast.

Pretty roses and floral paper and velvet benches.

Almost croissants, pains au chocoate, and rolls.  So good.

And a Belgian waffle with powdered sugar for the lady.

View from the Belfry Bell Tower, built in the 1200s.  

Humongous bells over our heads.

Drew being a kook.

These were the stairs we had to climb - yikes.

Just a sign near a brewery that I agreed with.

Canal boat tour!

A park where all the swans hang out.

Gorgeous old homes!

We're on a boat!

This is the Relais Bourgondisch Cruyce Hotel, a super nice place where the movie In Bruges was filmed.  (Which was a huge deal to these Belgians, not necessarily because they liked the movie, but because it brought fame to their city and now you'll hear people say "And THIS is where Colin Farrell walked during the filming.  And THIS is where Colin liked to have drinks while filming."  Etc.  I still need to watch the movie I guess.)

De Halve Maan Brewery - one of the only ones in Bruges with a guided tour and a gorgeous view of the Bruges country side!

View from the roof, right after I slammed the top of my head onto a concrete partition in the ceiling.   I thought I was concussed.  What a klutz.  

After starting off at the brewery, we went to several other little bars/pubs for extensive beery tasting!  It was so fun and the beers were awesome!  I imagine afternoons like this are ones we'll look back on when we're older and life is hectic with kids or other things, and say "Remember when we were young and had nothing to do but drink Belgian beer and wander around?"  Gotta take full advantage of these moments.  I'd say we're doing a decent job thus far.

We had several friends recommend this cute "beerhouse", t'Brugs Beertje, and we were NOT disappointed!

The beer menu.  Literally a full encyclopedia of different beers.  Overwhelming.

Up next: Cafe Rose Red, another bar/cafe that specializes in Trappist beers.  Highly recommended.

They also offered beer flights!  Cool!

We randomly ate dinner at a place down the street from our hotel, De Vlaamsche Pot, a quaint little place that offers really rich Belgian dishes.  REALLY delicious.

The next morning, we ate waffles in front of the Belfry Bell Tower, stopped at a chocolate shop, and headed back to the train station to get to Brussels for the night.  More on that to come.

Chocolate figures at the chocolate shop.  Kinda weird but cute I guess.

Alright, more on Brussels to come - almost done!  Goodnight!

4 Years

Today is our 4th anniversary!  We're gonna celebrate this weekend with dinner and by buying our first piece of real art!  Right now we're watching our wedding video with a glass of wine and I'm getting all warm and fuzzy again inside.  And it's not just the wine.  It's our love!

I'm not gonna get any cheesier than I already have been, but I'm just gonna say I'm so happy to be with this guy on this adventure, and the other ones to come.  We're lucky to be togeths.

Cheers!

In Bruges

Like I mentioned, Drew and I went to Belgium for the Irish bank holiday last weekend!  Drew had been to Brussels before but both Bruges and Brussels were on our travel list.  So why not?  Besides the cool weather, it was pretty much just what we needed.  No mention of Nazis, no mention of Communism, no mention of anything but delicious waffles and a ridiculously huge selection of cool beers.  Happiness!

Our flight to Brussels was at 6:40am (always a bad idea) but we quickly got on the train to Bruges to spend our first two days there.  We haven't really done much train traveling thus far and it definitely took me back to college when me and Mere and Nell and Stephie lived the dream and traveled around western Europe.  We'd literally have 3 minutes between each train and Meredith would be barking out orders and directions while tiny Stephanie would throw our huge suitcases off the train with her bare hands while I ran around making sure no one robbed us while Eleanor made catty comments and planned the next games and activities we'd be playing on the train.  Pretty magical actually.  I want to write about that semester because so many cool things happened and we got to see and experience so much.  But maybe I'll do that another day.  It clearly made me think extensivelyabout this amazing time in my life.  Hence why I'm writing about it now.  Sigh.

Anyway, we got to Bruges, checked in our our charming hotel, went for a delicious Belgian lunch at a popular gastro pub, took a free 2-hour tour sponsored through the hotel, had a quick cat nap, and feasted on delicious seafood at a French (Belgian) cafe.  Here are some pics!

We're barely awake but let's DO THIS!

Our DELIGHTFUL hotel.  Wonderful service and beautiful interiors.  Highly recommended.

Lunch on our first day.  Chicken surprise!  With a heavy wine sauce and the cheesiest, richest potatoes you ever ate.    Oh baby.

Some Belgian beers and a chocolatey waffle.  Happy!

Our cute tour guide, explaining Belgian lace (and how you have to ask for the genuine stuff and pay top dollar for it)!

Bruges is like Amsterdam with it's canals, which I think make it even more charming.  This is an incredibly old building turned into a restaurant now.  Lovely.  

Funny looking trees along the canals.

Some more prime real estate on the canal: old home turned private mansion of some wealthy Belgian.

And...again.

Lovers on the canal.

Sint-Salvator Cathedral.  It evidently holds the blood of Christ?

Trying chocolate on our walking tour.

A gorgeous park/square, called a "Beguinage", which is where the Beguins used to live.  These were women who were KIND of like nuns but...had more freedom and did cooler things around the city.  

Silly nun in a restaurant roof's window.

She ain't no nun!

Convent turned Section 8 housing.  Or housing for the common folk.  Whatever.

Some pretty sights from the main Market Square!  This huge square reminded me a lot of Krakow's with the ornate buildings and quaint little cafes.

Center of the main Market Square

Belfry Clock Tower - we climbed to the top (but more on that later).

Cafes and restaurants and Belgian architecture.  

Dinner at Raymond!

Now that I have a job, I only eat lobster.
(Caption provided by Drew.)

After a stroll around town with ice cream in hand, we crashed to prep for a solid sightseeing day tomorrow.  More on that later!

Taste of Dublin

This past weekend, Iveagh Gardens hosted the city's Taste of Dublin - a humongous annual food and drink festival highlighting some of the best restaurants and food businesses around in a local park.  Being foodies and...drinkies(?), we of course had to go with some of our pals here.  And it did NOT disappoint!

VIP access y'all!  That meant we had our own private tent, some champagne, some cocktails, and got to skip ahead in all the queues at the booths.  Woohooo.

Premise: you pay moolah to get a ticket (all different price levels), and then you [unfortunately] have to pay more to sample food and drinks, outside of what's included in your ticket.  But it was totally worth it.

Mumm Champange!  Mmm.

First stop: Pichet's booth for Mushroom Risotto with "Truffle Foam".  Not sure what truffle foam is but I didn't question it.  This was damn good.

More Pichet: Crispy Hen's Egg with Black Pudding.

Up next: Tandoori Chicken Tikka with Mint Chutney and Crispy Potatos from Jaipur.  I love Indian food!  In fact, I think I'll make some this week.  You should too.

Friends!  Autumn, me, Missy.

We (girls) also bought a bottle of wine and went to this cooking demonstration from local celebrity chef Darina Allen - the founder of the Ballymaloe Cookery School.  (Shout out to Mere's grandmother Joan Davis for even telling me about this place!)

And perhaps my fave: the Lobster Roll from Rock Lobster.  This booth had a line around the park and it was totally worth it.  So rich.  So buttery.  So delicious.

Ian, Tom, and Drew. 

Yummy pork sandwich from the Paris Bakery!  It took everything in him to give me a bite.

A band performed later in the evening that Drew and Tom quickly became obsessed with.  Smash Hits knocked it out of the park with their 90s hits and Drew now wants to go to every show.  You can see him with his hands in the hair in the middle of the crowd if you look close.  What a nut job.

Great evening, great friends.  Great red wine stains all over my teeth and mouth.

This was our first venture into the food festival scene here in Europe and you better be damn sure I'll be doing this again.  Such wonderful food, and wine, and time with friends!  Yay!

Alright, it's almost quittin' time and I'm off to find Michelle Obama.  She's here checking out her ancestry (huh?) and seeing Riverdance tonight near the office so...maybe I'll give her a warm USA/Irish welcome.  Peeps are freakin out.  See ya!

Dublin Summer

The past 10 days, it was officially summer in Dubs!  Bright blue skies and a sweet 65° = happiness.  We almost forgot where we lived!  Every Dubliner has been out and about in the city and any park you walk through, you'll find it PACKED with people laying in the sun, with or without clothes.  And lots of poor sunburned Irish people because their poor skin can't handle the sun.  The whole thing has been pretty unbelievable and almost too good to be true - no one's wanted to jinx anything and mention the threat of clouds or rain and ruin our blissful [short] season of summer!

I haven't written in like...two weeks because we literally got off the plane from Belgium and IMMEDIATELY started moving into our new place!  And we've been doing nothing but packing and moving and unpacking and organizing and we get in bed every night exhausted.  So sincerest apologies to my 3 readers out there.  We took a trip to Ikea this weekend and narrowly escaped without killing each other - but did get some decent furniture to fit out our place with.  Yay!  I can't wait to invite all of you over.  So come visit me, damnit.

Here are some summery weekend pics.

The cute family of swans and their babies (did you know they were called signets?)  that I get to see every day when I walk through St. Stephen's Green!  The city of Dublin has adopted them and they're always surrounded by people taking pics.  Cuties.

Date night at The Chophouse to celebrate a paycheck and a new apartment!  (Getting drinks and watching soccer beforehand here though.)

Kook.

All afternoon/night BBQ at Tom and Missy's!  That's Tracy, Autumn, me, and Missy.  Fun in the sun.

Myself, Autumn, and fruity summer cider.

Beautiful coast on Sunday!

I just finished dominating a 4-mile run (first time in like....months to run!  I think I was inspired by the weather) and Drew was golfing so I took some much needed ME time by the water.  Lovely.

Alright, enough about me - I'm going to sleep in our new place!  I'll post more pics about our trip to Belgium tomorrow.  Goodnight!