S: Every corner of Bruges has antique and specialty shops that Meaghan and I spent a good portion of the day exploring. Everything you could ever imagine or want that is old is available here. I was looking through a box of cute tins out of interest and Meaghan picked one up that was an old floral Vaseline tin. I thought briefly that these things must be manufactured just to look old because there was so much of it… But there was still Vaseline in the tin Meags picked up so I guess not…

We set off to find breakfast, which was actually lunch by the time we were done thoroughly examining wooden mannequins, pinned Madagascar butterflies, posters and door handles galore. We ate at Bocca, a local pasta in a box shop that students line up out the door for. For 5€ we ate to our hearts (tummies) content while sitting near a fountain that lightly misted water towards us in the sun.

We stopped briefly at a famous comic book shop, laughed at a few dark and nonsensical local books and then happened upon a cute hot chocolate shop that was so much more than we could have hoped for…

Meag: I have had amazing hot chocolates in my day. But this…this was a new beast entirely. We hadn’t been planning to go to this hot chocolate shop at this point, but we were strolling around the streets of Bruges looking for something else when we happened upon the holy grail of hot chocolate: The Old Chocolatier. We had been told to skip the chocolate shop downstairs and to instead head right on up and order a single origin hot chocolate. What do you mean by “single origin”, Meaghan? Oh-ho, I am about to tell you. You get to choose from a page-long list of chocolate from around the world, each one with descriptions of the bitterness, fruitiness, darkness, etc. If I remember correctly, mine had a “hint of raspberry”. They serve steamed milk with whisks, and your chosen chocolate in a bowl made of chocolate on the side. It is up to you to pour your chocolate into the steaming milk, melting the chocolate into a rich and creamy drink as you stir. These masterpieces are served in bowl-sized mugs that take two hands to hold. We were so happy.

When we dragged ourselves away from the glory that is The Old Chocolatier, we went to the Basilica of the Holy Blood. It is a beautiful church set into a square right beside the main market square that holds a vial of Jesus’ blood. This vial was brought on Crusade in the 12th century and still attracts people to visit today. We went up and looked at the relic before sitting down and silently taking in the details of the church.

Sav: In the square outside the Basilica, there is a special statue with a hidden frog. If you are lucky enough to find the frog hidden in the statue, and are the 100,000 person to kiss it, it will turn into your prince or princess who is destined to carry your backpack forevermore. Unfortunately my prince did not step out from behind that statue, but I did get a hilariously confusing look from an old man while I kissed the frog. Sigh.

M: Maybe the next frog, Savanna.

S: I’m not holding my breath.

M: On a little residential street, an old abandoned house started collapsing a few years ago. Rather than let it be an eyesore, the neighbours took it into their own hands and filled it with flower pots and hanging baskets. It’s known to locals as “The Secret Garden”. With a name and a story like that, we had to track it down. It was exactly as one would imagine – overflowing with greenery and falling apart in a very pleasing way. We went into the house, albeit briefly, to check out what was inside. The loveliness continued inside too. With the sun starting to set, it was quite a romantic setting.

S: Story time: as we were heading into the house, a man stopped dead on his bicycle and looked at Meaghan and said “Don’t go in there. I don’t go into your house do I?!” And then he pedaled away. Meaghan instantly did not want to go inside and was all ‘it hurts my soul to break the rules sometimes.’ Well it was an ABANDONED house with a sign that said ‘enter at own risk’ not ‘GTFO this is private property.’ So naturally I made her go inside. “Meaghan for the love of God get your ass inside this house!” Turns out it was just a two room indoor garden, super decrepit but really cool!

S: We came across this bookstore that had massive stacks of books everywhere, with ZERO organization. I mean some say there’s a method to the madness but I was standing outside the door with a pang of anxiety wondering how people find anything when “Porcelain Cats of the 16th Century” is sitting next to “Captain Underpants Volume 7.” We stepped into a local shop called Lee:Loo that was filled with the most amazing clothes. It felt like I should have paid money or tipped them just for allowing me to touch the stuff! Needless to say we walked out of there without buying anything.

M: Not ones to go back on a promise, we were all set to go for a beer tasting with the guy from Tennessee down at the bar. We joined a table of some really fun people all waiting for the tour, including Harrison and Thomas from Oregon, Satch from London, Simona from Italy, Sofie and Jetty from the Netherlands and Antonela from Argentina. Meeting and having a blast with people from all over the world has been so amazing on this trip.

The group of us waited an hour and a half for this beer tasting to start, and by the time it finally did we were ready to move on to something else. We finished our beers and the lot of us headed off to another bar where we had a free beer coupon. Can’t beat that! It was in the basement of a very old building and the ceiling was all super cool gothic arches and covered in little flags. We spent quite a while here, trying different beers (I quite liked the Fort Lapin) and having excited conversations about our favourite Harry Potter novels and movies. The consensus in the end was that they are all amazing.

From here we made a quick stop at a club before we realized we were not feeling it. We moved out of that hot and sweaty place to a slightly less hot and sweaty bar next door. Much to our delight, Satch entertained us with his magic tricks. Turns out he used to be a semi-professional magician! We were stumped by his tricks, to say the least. And he seemed to have done some kind of magic trick with time too, because next time we looked at the clock it was much later and we called it a night.

S&M