Belgian Treats

Hey peeps, I hope you all had a lovely weekend.

Friday was a bit of a rush, as I had to get to Kings Cross for Friday evening- luckily the traffic driving home was fine, and we made it! Even had time to buy a sandwich to eat on the train.

The Eurostar goes to Brussels, so then it was another train ride to Bruges- we arrived at our hotel pretty late, but were up bright and early the next morning for a lovely wander around. We had breakfast at the Gingerbread Teahouse (is there a more perfect name than that?), and spent hours walking around the streets admiring the pretty buildings, the park, the canals etc. I had a waffle for lunch, and Andy had frites (half the reason for us going there!).

Taken with my mobile to use as a background- Andy took some proper pictures!

In the evening we went for a walk around the Christmas markets- they are so pretty all lit up. There was an ice skating rink, and all the buildings had white lights (I don’t like coloured lights)- there was music playing but none of that Slade rubbish. It looked like a Christmas movie, only it was real!

Today we went back to the Gingerbread tearoom for breakfast (they did the most amazing hot chocolate, which was chocolate chips in the bottom of a cup, with steamed milk poured on top, so you had to stir it and melt the chocolate mmmm), and did a spot of shopping. Actually quite a bit of shopping!

I bought this cute reindeer top! The shop had a cute bear one, and a penguin one (but it was red, which I don’t like to wear)- they had lovely PJ’s too, but I stuck with the top.

I bought a magnet from the Christmas markets- that is what all the buildings look like! Plus some dark chocolate with hazelnuts, cute little Christmas chocolates (holly leaves, reindeer, Christmas trees, snowmen etc) and some rice crispy chocolates which we were going to eat for lunch today but forgot.

As well as selling chocolates, loads of the shops had logs of marzipan in the windows, in many flavours (mocha, chocolate, cherry, hazelnut..)- I bought a slice of pistachio and a slice of orange- sounds so good. Plus this speculoos spread which I think is a cinnamon biscuit?

We decided not to go to any of the museums (eg the chocolate museum) and Andy suggested I spend the money on buying chocolate instead. I bought a little tin (they were everywhere too, and I decided that it would be good to store teabags in)- anyway it would have been rude not to buy a little chocolate figure to go in it.

Whoops, when I got home my Montezuma’s order had arrived- special Christmas hot chocolate (orange and spice flavour) and some yummy coated fruits, plus a free sample of hand cream! Exciting. I think we have plenty of sweet treats to keep us going for a long time!

Anyway, I had never been to Bruges before, but I loved it. It was such a pretty town, there were so many lovely buildings to see, and pretty shops, and the Christmas market was just lovely, not tacky at all. It really put me in a festive mood. I still think it is amazing that we can get the train across to Europe, and now it is high speed it is so quick. It took us longer to get up to Newcastle than it took for us to get there.

I would love to visit there again. Have you ever been to Bruges before? Or any Christmas market? I fancy Salzburg next year, and next week we are off to Bath! I might explode tinsel everywhere in a minute!

PS> You still have time to enter the giveaway for the Zalando voucher- I have had a bit of problem with comments going to the spam, so it might be worth a check if you have entered- check that your comment has come up I mean. x