Back to Belgium (Bruges)

I thought I would enter a nice ‘Summer throwback’ into this pretty wet and moody Winter ’19 season. Although, as it turns out, it’s a throwback to Belgium. Which pretty much means it’s also kinda wet.

‘Sure’, I hear you say. ‘Weather is all well and good.. but tell me this and tell me true. Were there WAFFLES?’ ‘Did you Eat All The Waffles??!’

Yuuuuuupppp.

So, I’ve already posted some shots from Bruges, because it turns out that I was in a suuupeer snap-happy mood when Ariel and I visited. Check out an abbey, some tulips, and a whole lot of posing right here.

I’ve also already mentioned the background to our short trip on a long weekend. We went to Belgium to visit The Flowers (oh my, the flowers), and basically ended up seeing Ghent, Brussels and Bruges at the same time, simply because the country is so darn small and easy to get around.

So anyways. On one of these getting around days, Ariel and I tumbled off the train into Brussels, and followed a fairly steady stream of tourists in the direction of a Church spire.

We were briefly distracted by some flowers. Wisteria is one of my all time favourite flowers because it reminds me of my childhood home.. but also Ariel and I had a make-believe game as children about being two of a huge household of sisters (Ariel has always been great for writing stories about us), and I have a lurking memory that Wisteria may have featured strongly in their history (was it their surname even?..)

Anyway.

As it turned out, our insane family desire to constantly stop and photograph flowers worked in our favour. By the time we were ready to go again we had managed to lose the majority of the crowd.

So it turns out that Bruges is pretty. Really pretty. Even in the rain. To be 100% honest, both Ariel and I preferred Gent of the two, but mostly because there were just so many tourists in Bruges, and because the weather was so crappy.

And also, it turns out if you take a selfie which is 90% either of your faces, you don’t even have to see the other people!

Good eh?

Here’s it from a slightly different angle and (mercifully), on the zoom out.

We went to Bruges basically on our last day in Belgium… and it was only at this point in time that I realised that we had managed to stay in the country three days without eating a single waffle.

Of course, we both went through a brief moment of existential crisis (why are we even HERE, if not to eat of the Waffles???), and then, being the strong independent women that we are, went about rectifying the problem:

Ariel went traditional. I went obscene:

There are not regrets here.

We walked off our waffles by doing a bit of a stroll around the city…

.. which as I mentioned, is very, very pretty. And also dramatic. I like dramatic!

And then we thought to ourselves ‘you know what, this seems like good boating weather’.

I will here take a moment to mention that our parents very rarely took us boating as children (a clear misstep on their part in our upbringing.. but also quite understandable given my very strong tendency to vomit profusely when within 10 foot of a boat), so our failure to recognise the ‘storm-a-brewing’ is probably on them and not us.

Beside, Ariel had that all important ability to turn into a vampire-bat tucked that she was confident would keep her dry.

We got on the tiny boat with about 20 other people, all of whom seemed to have remembered to bring umbrellas.

We had not.

Almost immediately it began to rain.

Luckily, it turns out that the boat people had more umbrellas than individuals, and took pity on the poor Australians who didn’t know what the strange sky water was.

(I would like to note here, for posterity, that I was not even slightly ill on the little boat. But I did get wet. And so did my lens).

The rain did not stop. But at least it was more in the ‘drizzle’ than ‘downpour’ range.

We went for a walk to find a restaurant recommended by a Belgian friend, but unfortunately it was closed.

So instead we popped into the closest food place that offered Moules on the menu (which, I’m pretty sure they all do).

We ate, we drank, and we stayed longer-than-necessary to both warm and dry our socks and our photography equipment.

And then we hit the town again.

And by the town, I mean of course, the truffle shops.

Of course, choosing truffles is a great skill in life, but by this point in our journey Ariel had become quite the expert.

Her proficiency and pace in the act granted us the ability to visit many-a truffle house in very little time indeed.

At some point, a wise member of the group-of-two realised that we were reaching critical mass in truffle load, and the only possible option was to start consuming some: