Wednesday, March 12, 2008

a taste of belgium!

last weekend we made a day trip to Bruges (Brugge in dutch), in belgium. the great thing about being in maastricht is that we're right smack between the belgium and german border. a trip to paris takes just 3 hours, a trip to brussels 2 hours, and to germany just 1 hour! how cool is that?

bruges is a world heritage site and belongs to the flemish region of belgium. belgium has two main regions, the dutch speaking flemish region and french speaking walloon region, with a small community who speaks german. as a result, belgium has three official languages - dutch, french and german! it was interesting because for our 3 hours ride from maastricht-liege-bruges, the language around us changed from dutch to french to dutch again.

366 steps up the belfry



preserving a piece of history

i must say bruges is quite a nice place with some very unique buildings, but was a tad too touristy.

horny dog spotted a friend!

there were also plenty of chocolate shops along the streets and we were really in chocolate heaven. i've always heard about the reputation of belgian chocolate, but after trying some for myself, i was really blown away. i bought some chocolates from The Chocolate Line, one of the shops recommended by lonely planet, and they didn't even survive the train ride home because i ate them all!

uber fresh, uber dark chocolate, uber quality!


2 comments:

cherps said...

lol love the dog shot. damn europe looks super fun!

Anonymous said...

haha yeah cherps europe is fun!! lots to do and lots to see. =)