The travels of Tim and Megan: Bruges, Belgium

Megan's parents (David and Carol) are currently travelling through Europe. Last week they were in London visiting their daughters and checking out some of the sites. On Friday we set off with David, Carol, Anna and Guy for a few days in Bruges, Belgium. It was a pretty big day in the lives of Tim and Bear, both notching their 10th country visited.

Friday

We caught the Eurostar train to Brussels (via Lille in France), then switched trains at Brussels and headed up to Bruges. After checking into our B&B, we set off to explore the centre of Bruges. Bruges is a small city, and quite touristy, but it is a beautiful place to visit, very clean and peaceful. After Tim had sampled some french fries and mayo (sooooo good), Megan and Tim wandered the narrow cobbled streets, marvelling at the dozens of chocolate shops. Belgium is famous for its fine chocolates and even finer beers, so we were determined to sample lots of both!

After buying our first instalment of chocolates, we found a nice pub with seats outside in the afternoon sun, and ordered some beers. Tim was keen to re-acquaint himself with the old favourite from the Belgian pubs in New Zealand, Hoegaarden, while Megan tried out the raspberry beer. We checked out the main town square and found another pub, and thought it would be rude not to, so we sat down for another beer, see photo below of Tim's enormous glass of Leffe Blonde. Note that Leffe Blonde gives you the ability to ride tiny motorbikes in the childrens' playground on the way back to the B&B (see below).

Then it was time to meet up with the others and we all headed to a restaurant near our B&B for dinner. Anna and Guy had chosen well, as the restaurant was very nice. We all gave it an A. Happy days. Megan had steak, which was almost as big as she was, and Tim had an enormous pot of steamed mussels. When in Belgium...

After dinner Guy, Anna, Tim and Megan headed to the Irish pub (yes, they are worldwide) to see the second half of the France v Ireland Rugby World Cup game. The place was packed but we managed to get some good seats and order a couple of beers, so it was good times. France dominated and won comfortably, almost certainly ending Ireland's campaign.

Saturday

On Saturday morning the Comptons headed off to join a tour of the battlefields near the lovely town of Ypres. It is hard to express how it feels to stand on the WWI battlefields and imagine desolation, mud and desperation where farmhouses and cows now stand. Over 26,000 New Zealanders died (highest per capita of any country, we only had 1 million total population at that stage) in that war for no apparent purpose. An atrocious waste of young lives, but Megan felt it was important to pay tribute to the personal sacrifice of the soliders and appreciated the opportunity to visit the graves of our ancestors.

On a less gloomy note, we had a very informative coach driver who helped bring the scenes to life and explained the impact of WWI then, and still now, on the Belgian people. I noticed a parallel with what we learned in Vietnam, that it is often the people who do not ask for war who are left to pick up the pieces. The area around the "Western front" is still turning up 750 tonnes of ammunition each year - including live stuff that unfortunately kills people (mainly children). Belgium bears the cost of disposing of all that ammunition safely, as well as construction costs when buldings sink because of the extensive tunnel network running below the surface. When the local council recently did some digging to build a new roundabout they uncovered an underground German bunker with six soliders still in their bunks! Madness - 90 years on.

Meanwhile, Tim spent the morning exploring more of the town centre, including visiting a big marketplace and buying some more chocolates. At lunchtime, Tim met up with Guy and they headed back to the Irish pub to watch some of New Zealand's Twenty20 World Cup cricket semi-final against Pakistan. Unfortunately a swarm of South Africans invaded the pub not long after we arrived, all demanding to see the South Africa v Tonga rugby, so we didn't get to see much cricket (probably for the best, as NZ got hammered). We grabbed some BLTs and a few beers for lunch and watched the rugby. We were the only two guys supporting Tonga in the whole pub (of course, we could easily be mistaken for Tongans given our muscular physiques, tanned skin and abundant hair), and it was a fantastic game, as Tonga led for much of the match, then fell a long way behind, but came storming home to almost snatch a huge upset win. Giddy up.

Once the others returned from the battlefields, we all set off for dinner to another super restaurant. Plenty of beers, steamed mussels, steak and french fries with mayo for all! After dinner, the "young ones" stopped in at a pub for another beer/hot chocolate.

Sunday

First thing Sunday morning we all had a boat trip down the canals that run through the centre of Bruges. Our boat driver / commentator was very funny, cracking jokes at every opportunity in his strong accent that made him sound a little like Borat. The boat tour was really fun; it was a good way to see a bit more of the town. After the boat trip, we all went our separate ways. Tim and Megan bought more chocolate (surprise, surprise) and then headed to the main town square for a horse and cart ride!!!

Horse and cart dominates the narrow streets of Bruges; every few minutes you can hear a horse trotting along the cobblestones on any given street. Sunday proved to be a very popular day, with loads of tourists lining up for a horse and cart ride. Eventually we hopped on a cart and were introduced to our driver, Maria, and our horse, Chico. Giddy up. We had a half-hour tour of the city and definitely felt like "king of the castle" (see below)! Very fun.

While on our tour, Tim spotted a pub that claimed to have over 400 different beers, so we checked it out for lunch. A cheese and salad sandwich and 5 beers later, we can confirm that they do have an awful lot of different beers, some with quite high alcohol percentage. Megan was keen on the fruit beers again, she tried the cherry beer and apple beer, while Tim sampled a chocolate flavoured beer. We were so impressed that we went next door to their bottle store and bought a dozen bottles to take back to London with us!!!

It was then time to meet the others at the Irish pub to watch the All Blacks play Scotland. A comfortable win for the All Blacks, another few beers and a solid pub feed made for a good end to the afternoon. However, we were determined to show Guy and Anna the fine pub we had found, so we took them back there and tried all sorts of crazy beers, including goat beer and elephant beer (not actually made from those animals, although who knows what those crazy Belgians will add to their beers next). Very nice.

On Monday morning we (eventually) made our way to the train station and headed back to London, while David and Carol were off to Amsterdam to sample the cake they had heard so much about.