Rick Steves: My new spirit animal

(Andddd going back in time to April 10th...)

Since this is our last break of the year, we decided to take a quick day trip to Bruges—a very pretty city in Belgium about an hour and a half away. While trying to decide what to do in our six-hour trip, I remembered that Cathy left her Rick Steve’s Belgium Travel Guide at our place in February. I’ll admit to being extremely skeptical about Rick Steves—as I am about any old guy who looks like an ex-Brady Bunch extra travel guide salesman—but now I see that I made a grave error in judgment.

When I opened the book, I saw that he classified the importance of activities with triangles—only things marked with three triangles are a “must-do.” My first reaction to this system was: now I will feel obligated to do things, CURSE YOU, STEVES; but, after a quick skim, I realized there was only one item with three triangles: drinking beer. 

So, our travel day started as they generally do—with Carson unable to find something imperative to leaving; me freaking out and assuming all is doomed; and finally Carson sprinting to the location of our departure, somehow making it on time with the imperative item.

Luckily, the rest of the day went by without issue. We immediately started Rick Steves' walking tour, which lead us through the very, very beautiful Minnewater Park and ultimately to the center of the city. 

Minnewater Park

More Minnewater Park

Us with my new BFF

Random swans!

Canal!

Everything really was painfully quaint

We were sort of hungry after our walk, so we stopped by a friterie that offered a seemingly great deal: 1.50 euros for a small cone of fries. Brilliant! We went in and ordered.

Cashier: That’s 1.50. Do you want sauce?

Us: Obviously... Yes.

Cashier: Okay then that’ll be 2.40 actually. What kind?

Us: Who the hell orders a plain cone of fries...Mayonnaise.

Cashier: Okay then that’ll be 2.50.

The mayo was not garnished with gold flakes as I reasonably
expected, but it was amazing nonetheless. 

After eating our fries and doing a noble job of glancing at several Steves-suggested-monuments, we immediately went to a Steves-suggested-bar called 2be. I actually read about it before picking up his guide, so it’s almost definitely one of the most touristy/popular bars in Bruges. This would usually be sort of off-putting, but sometimes places are super famous because they are just super awesome. This bar definitely falls into that category—the wall was covered with all the Belgium beers and their specific glasses, the menus were suspended on strings from the ceiling, the beer selection was awesome/very, very reasonably priced, and it had a lovely patio directly on the canal. We ended up getting a spot in the sun and sampled Belgian beers for about two hours.

The first of the day

Carson's glass was admittedly cooler than mine

And another!

When it was officially lunchtime, we made our way to the adorable Market Square and sat outside at a random café. The square is very similar in design to...every European square ever...but it did seem extra old/well-maintained and was a perfect place to people watch. The next items on the list were two Steves-approved places: a beer bottle shop—where we bought nothing due to the obscene prices but was very interesting to see—and a chocolatier called Dumon. We got a 250g-sampler box and I don’t think we’ve ever made a more worthy mutual purchase.

Carson probably has a record breaking collection of city center panos
at this point

At lunch 

We ended our day with another patio beer at 2be and then walked very slowly back to the train station.

So to summarize: Bruges is a fantastic place to spend a lazy day trip and I don’t know how I have ever done anything without Rick Steves ever.

Other than our day trip, we’ve pretty much just been hanging out. Mike and Kels get here on Monday and we’re very, very excited to see them. Though we will never live up to Rick’s tour guide prowess, we have some really neat stuff planned and will do our best to channel his essence while showing them around Lille.