Chocolate and Beer

For the late May Bank Holiday, despite poor planning on my part, I managed to join two of my American friends on a trip to Belgium. We stayed in Brussels and spent a day in Bruges over the 3 day weekend. Unfortunatly I don't know a lot about European history (which has been bothering me more and more since I moved here...I need to start reading some non-fiction) so I had no idea what to expect from Brussels...except of course for Chocolate and Beer (and waffles).
They were having a Jazz festival in the Grand Place, I don't know who was playing, but it gave the whole area a really great energy and I love this picture of the incredibly modern stage set in front of the incredibly Gothic buildings in the square.

Bruges was not a city I was familiar with until a few months ago...but the Brits love it. It's a very small town near the coast of Belgium with loads of canals. Hundreds of years ago the Bruges Harbour apparently rivaled London's. Now it's very quiet, and sort of sleepy when it's not being over-run by tourists...which it usually is. This is a picture from the little cruise we took along the canal. No Gondolas here, so it's not quite like Venice.

We also visited a pub that had 400 different types of Belgian Beer. Between us we tried about 12...two were absolutely foul, and I will forever steer clear of the 'fruit' ones. The first of the foul ones was served in a wine bottle...weird.















The menu listed all 400 beers by type color-coded and indexed along with a description of each, so naturally, the menu was huge.