For Easter weekend, Sam and I decided to hop on a ferry and head over to Bruge Belgium. It was my first time leaving England since we got here 10 months ago...i was in desperate need of a trip. :) And waffles and chocolate sounded like the perfect medicine for my island fever. :) We had such a great time. It was so nice to get away for a bit especially before Sam leaves next week for the Netherlands. Hope you guys enjoy the pics!!
On the English coast in Dover, waiting to board the ferry
Here we go!!!
Jam packed with cars...
we were one of the last people on
So excited to finally leave England for a bit
leaving the port of Dover
The White Cliffs of Dover...
they're in a song but we couldn't remember how it went,
so we made up our own song :)
Pretty cool
There's the coast of France!!
So stinking excited to get off this ferry and see some of
France and Belgium!
Belgium!!
This video is of our hotel's car elevator. The streets are so tiny
and there really isn't much room for parking, so
they have this elevator that you go into and it puts you
underground to their private parking lot.
Sam said he felt like he was batman in the bat-mobile. haha
It was pretty cool.
I can't believe we are really in Belgium!
Sam's own personal heaven, 400 different types of
belgium beer. Oh where to begin...
The Bell Tower, down in Bruge's Market square
We climbed it, all 366 very VERY narrow stairs...
Are we there yet?! Seriously...
The views from the top were breath-taking
London, 230 km that way
I thought the houses/buildings were so cute
And now back down the 366 very VERY narrow stairs...
Getting ready for our Canal Tour
so pretty :)
This was the oldest bridge in Bruge...
I think it was several hundreds years old and
has never been worked on
We were up there earlier... (Bell Tower)
I really enjoyed the Canal Tour and was thankful
our tour guide gave the tour in French and English
Here's a video of our tour guide talking in French
Over in the corner (the dark grey and gold building)
is called the Basilica of the Hold Blood Church.
Its really pretty on the inside. When we were inside, tons of people
were waiting to get in and we weren't sure why. But later found out that
this church has what they believe to be real drops of Christ's blood.
People would wait in line to go in and have a chance to kiss it.
The lobby of our super nice hotel. We were on our way
out to dinner and when the hotel offered us each a free glass
of champagne. So we had a seat in front of the fire
and enjoyed. :)
Typical Sam...just kidding :)
So on friday night, our hotel made us reservations at a place called "Raymonds" and said that it offered real authentic Belgium cuisine. Which we wanted to try, but later regretted our choice. It was a really nice restaurant, but their favorite and most popular belgium dish was called "steak tartare" aka cold raw hamburger served with french fries, tiny pickles and really tiny white balled onions. But the steak is literally, a pile of hamburger that they mix with onions, worchestershire sauce, garlic, and other goodies, but then they just serve it cold rather than cook it. I made it through 3/4s of it before I couldn't eat anymore. It would have been amazing if they just would have grilled it. Oh well... Sam and I though for sure we might not make it through the night (eating raw hamburger and all) but we're still here, 3 days later. :)
Sam's a little worried...
Market Square at night
Bell Tower
A really funny way to spell Chinese
All the roads look like this. Sam thought I was silly for taking this picture
but I just thought that it was so pretty :)
You can take horse drawn carriage rides all throughout downtown,
but we decided not to cause it was so expensive
Belgium is known for their waffles and chocolate, of course
but they are also known for their lace. Here is a map of
Bruge made to look like lace.
One of the many chocolate or "sweet" shops around
We bought some truffles from this one though
The Church of the Lady Bruge
Michelangeo's "Madonna and Child" statue. Its the only art piece
from Michelangeo that's outside of Italy. And it was my first famous
piece of real art I've seen. Next stop...The Louvre. :)
On the top of the "De Halve Maan" brewery.
We went on a belgium beer tour.
Sam with his first real belgium beer. :)
Our Belgium brewery tour guide
And yet another waffle..so good!!
My favorite was with chocolate sauce, powered sugar, and vanilla
ice cream on top. Heaven on earth!!
Yay, a picture of us not taken by us. :)
Such a clown.. :)
Yes, it is what you think. A huge chocolate dragon
Then on Saturday we headed home. But I really wanted to make a stop to see my "princess castle" called Leeds Castle. So once we got off the ferry we made our way over to the castle only to find that it had closed for the day. :( But thanks to my iphone, I found a random guys blog that talked about this public path that you can walk on that takes you right to the castle and you don't have to pay or anything. Plus if the castle is closed, you can still access its grounds. So with help from Sofia (our GPS) we found this random foot path, parked the car, and headed into the woods. And you guessed it, we got to see Leeds!! I was so excited!! We owned the entire place...not a soul around. :) We didn't get to go inside of course, (we'll have to go back to do that sometime) but we walked all around the castle. It was so pretty!! I finally got to see my princess castle!!
At the end of the path...my future home! :)
Ahhh....
I have my prince and now all I need is my princess castle :)
Around the back of my home ;)
It was a wonderful Easter weekend! I'm so glad we got to go over to Belgium. Our next big trip is for our anniversary at the end of June, which I am SO excited for. We are going to Santorini Greece for 5 days. :) And then we'd like to maybe make a trip to Italy sometime in the fall and then Germany around Christmas time to visit a bunch of Sam's friends who are over there and I want to hit up all the Christmas markets that I've heard so much about. We'll keep you all posted though. Please continue to keep us in your prayers. Sam will be gone alot in the next couple of months, starting next week. So please pray for his safety as well as my loneliness when he's gone.
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