Had an awesome weekend in Belgium! When I was planning our trip I read a little on Brugge and Brussels, I chose Brugge because it was an older city and most said it was more picturesque. I'm so glad we chose it because it was a great city. We started off the day walking to the Square where we ate breakfast and decided to take a carriage tour. 
Once we had an idea of where we wanted to go we started walking....on our stroll there was a bike rental place but we assumed they wouldn't have child seats so we almost walked by but decided to try and sure enough they did! It was only €12 each for the day. Once we got on bikes it was soo much quicker to explore the city! We stopped by the Bruges Zot Brewery for a tour and got to try some of their unfiltered, made in house, beer. It was yummy, we tried the same beer later at a restaurant and it wasn't half as good because it had been filtered.
We ate some mussels for dinner, which were very yummy, especially when we dont get seafood very often anymore.
The next day we went back and rented bikes again. Stopped by a to-go waffle place and OMG the waffles from there just plain were sooo much better than the ones we had eaten the day before at a restaurant! So if you get waffles in Belgium be sure it is from a street vendor and not a sit down restaurant. Then we were going to ride along the canal that circles the city but the guy that rents the bikes told us about a nice ride through Damme and into Sluis, a city in the Netherlands, so we decided to try it. We were soo glad we did!
When we got to Sluis we sat down for a drink, strolled around for a while and bought some cheese and salami. I spotted this Macaw just hanging out on a man's shoulder. Gracelyn was concerned that it had just landed there and wanted to know why the man wasn't getting it off lol.
When we were back in Brugge we explored the canal like we had originally planned to see all the windmills. Then we spent lots of money on chocolate! We definitely should have shopped around because the second place we stopped at was cheaper and better! The truffles we got were from Leonidas and they are so good!
We ended the day with a ferris wheel ride...but of course the girls wanted to go on more rides so we went on a few until it started pouring. Adam and Patience were on a ride when it started so they were soaked and we all got a little wet going back to our hotel.
In the morning we decided to take a ride to the beach since it was only a short drive away. Pretty sure it was the girls' favorite part of the weekend. It was nice to be able to let them run around for a while.
We stopped in Gent on the way home. Much bigger city than Brugges and it had a few huge cathedrals that were very beautiful but I was very glad that we hadn't chose a big city to visit all weekend. Its hard to enjoy when the kids want to be free to walk but you cant let them because of traffic. All the restaurant's seating was full so we decided on McDonald's. The girls were happy to get their french fries. Then we headed home. It was a memorable weekend and I am falling in love with Europe. I don't want to leave. We have two years left and I just don't feel like its enough!
