4th of July in Belgium!

When people think of the freedom of America, they often think of Belgian beer.  No?  Well, it was worth a try.  We hopped on a couple of flights and found ourselves in the land of beer, chocolate, and waffles for the 4th of July weekend!

Everyone has been telling us that we absolutely have to go to Bruges, Belgium.  And you know what?  It's true.  It's about the most darling little town ever.  Adding to it's adorableness (no, my sister confirmed it was a real word via text.  Just go with it.) are the following things:

1. Mussels.  I love mussels.  They are delicious.  I can, embarassingly, eat the shit out of some mussels in Italy.  And have on many occassions.  And then craftily attempted to hide the very obvious lack of portion control by pawning the shells off on someone elses plate.  "Geeze, save some for the rest of us!"  I never said that I was a good person. 



But mussels in Belgium had so many flavor options!  I got curry!  Curry, friends!  Living in Italy, we don't get a lot of curry, unless I make it myself.  But up there in Belgium, with my own entire pot of mussels, I ate myself silly (there is no photographic evidence of this.  I, instead, am modestly posting a photo of Tom with his mussels).  What's extra adorable about Belgium is this: you use your first mussels little shell as a utensil to pick out your other mussels.  Like a somewhat disturbing set of chopsticks, but made from the carcass of something you've already ingested.  No, seriously, and I thought that was adorable. 



2. Beer: Belgian beer had so many options!  Delicious options!  Dark beer, light beer, hoppy beer, ambers.  And we tried the hell out of them!  From mid-day on, we stopped about every other hour for a beer pit-stop and you know what, it makes traveling pretty fun!  Rochefort 10 was my personal favorite - really dark, very rich flavor, super SUPER high in alcohol content.  That's the problem I have with Belgian beer, sometimes you forget that 13% alcohol in a beer is pretty effing strong when you are sweating your ass off and bottles of water are an astonishing 6 Euro each!  Mother of pearl, are you serious?!?  Beer is literally cheaper to drink than water.  So we did.  And supplemented Excedrin Migraine for fluids.  It felt like a good life choice at the time...  My liver may beg to differ in the long term.

3. The Midnight Sun: Talk about messing up your internal clock - the sun in Northern Europe refused to set.  Just refused.  Crossed it arms and just stayed up.  "I'll go to bed when I'm good and ready!"  The sun setting at 10:30 led to many very, very late night meals.  Because we're so used to eating at 8:30 (or later) in Italy, it didn't seem that weird to go to dinner late, but the folks up north are used to the other side of the coin as well, those pesky cold months when daylight is scarce.  Despite the late setting sun, most people still ate at about 5-7 pm and when we went out for dinner at 9:30, we were the only ones there!  "Oh hey... are you still open?  Can you feed us?"

I'd say our weirdest stop in Brussels was the Magritte Museum.  Rene Magritte, famous for the faceless businessman in a bowler hat, was also really trippy.  Wandering through the museum, more than once I thought to myself, "Modern art is really weird.  And I like modern art."  I felt like my mom, wondering, 'what does this mean??'  If you're in Brussels and you really want to go to a museum, just take my word for it, and skip Magritte.  You're welcome, I just saved you 8 Euro.

Here are some pics of the midnight sun in Brussels and Bruges.  As well us Kim, Nathan, and Tom measuring street distances.  It's scientific, trust me on that.

Lovely, lovely places.  Bruges, definitely so.  Between the chocolate, the massive amounts of beer, the constant French fries and occasional Belgian waffles, my diet has gone to hell in a handbag and I'm look for more A-line dresses for the remainder of the summer. 

Coming up next, Ireland!
Baci,

Team K