Two Canadians in Belgium: the art of eating unhealthily

Hello all! We are in the lovely medieval city of Bruges, Belgium--this place is a time warp! We have been awed by the beauty of this quaint little city. The architecture, the culture, and the food have been great.

We spent the last couple days in Brussels and really enjoyed it. We ate badly, having classic "frites" with (European) ketchup for lunch and Belgian waffles drenched in whipped cream and strawberries (Caitlin) and dark chocolate (Matt) for dinner. We don't think all the walking we're doing will be able to counteract the caloric intake. The Grand Place in Brussels was INCREDIBLE--we first saw it in the evening with the facades of the buildings lit up and words cannot even describe how beautiful it was. Matt said he has seldom been so awed by anything in his life. Our sleep the first night was a bit rough, but we slept like corpses last night and awoke ready to take off to Bruges.

The train trip to Bruges was quick and we found our hostel in the city after getting directions from a friendly local since the instructions provided by both our book and the hostel website were completely useless. As we mentioned, Bruges is gorgeous--packed with medieval architecture, including great churches, and lots of excellent restaurants. We bought fresh bread and gouda from a couple stands in the "Markt" and sat in the sunshine eating it--delicious. Dinner was at a cheap, but tasty, little Italian restaurant called Pasta Presto that advertised itself as "pizza, pasta, and rock and roll" and then proceeded to play terrible soft-rock/hip hop hits of the 80's and early 90's', which we both found pretty hilarious. Tomorrow we are off to Amsterdam for 3 days of who-knows-what...

We hope that you are well and we are sorry that we have not been able to post pictures--nowhere has had the facilities to upload pics off of memory cards. If we are able, we will post some whenever we can; if not, you will have to wait until we get home and throw them up on Facebook or Flickr. We'll try to post again in Amsterdam or Cologne. Bye for now...