Isabelle has an employee cover the bookstore today, so we’re
lucky that both Stephan and Isabelle can spend the entire day with us. We’re treated to another delicious breakfast
and head out. Our first night in Sluis
we heard that Stephan’s sister and brother-in-law, Karin and JP, have a repair
shop and a significant car collection, too, so that’s our first stop this
morning. The shop is amazing, vintage cars, sports
cars, race cars, motorcycles. JP shows
us the cars and tells what makes each one special. He races and shows us his current track car
and the BMW racer he is currently building.
There is more to the collection which is in a warehouse across town and
of course I want to see it. When JP
fires up the Aston Martin, his daily driver, I jump into the passenger seat
like an excited puppy. It is after all
one of my bucket list cars. It sounds as
good as it looks as we motor along the tight roads through town. The other half of the collection is just as
amazing and includes an Auto Union, a massive Graham Paige V8 Touring Car, a
cool Mercedes Limo and even a restored Model T.
This totally unexpected part of our trip is a real treat. Hugs and kisses and we’re off to Belgium.
Bruges specifically.
It’s only 20 minutes away thanks to the new highway. Bruges is as beautiful as you’ve heard, and
we’re here early enough that the town is just waking up. The streets leading into the center of the
village are lined with shops on the ground floor of three and four story
buildings, many from as early as the 14th century. It’s raining on and off and Isabelle’s bright
orange umbrella adds a nice splash of color to our photos. We pass the Golden Arches set inside a very
old building. The juxtaposition is fun,
and we poke our heads inside to see if the line from Pulp Fiction, our favorite
movie, is accurate. There is it on the
menu board – Royal with Cheese. “Do you know why they call it ROY-AL with
Cheese?”
Isabelle and Stephan want to take us on a boat ride through
the city’s canals as a way to get familiar with the place, see some highlights
and catch a bit of the history. We enter
the boat just off the main square, the square with the clocktower from the 2008
movie. The boat captain is right out of
central casting, with animated facial features and wearing a comically cliché captain’s
hat for what is essentially a theme park choo-choo train on water. He’s a real character who’s done this tour
thousands of times, telling the same anecdotes at the same spots on each voyage,
adding his own laugh track through the mic after each joke. The journey lasts about a half hour and
really is lovely.
American’s generally know Belgium for two things, and
departing the boat launch, we head for the most important of the two. Beer garden dead ahead. The selection at the 2be Beer Wall and Bar is
staggering, but we skip the myriad of bottles and head back to the 16
taps. The beer menus with today’s
offerings are printed in different languages and hung from bungees from the
ceiling. We each pick a different brew
and find a table to settle in to enjoy. The
beers are very different from each other, each good in its own right. Mandy, who rarely drinks beer, is loving the Kriek
Boon, a lambic beer aged in oak barrels with 25% black cherries added after 6
months. It’s complex and fruity without
being sweet, a serious beer with a nice flavor.
Continuing on theme, we’re off to De Halve Maan, the oldest
working brewery in Bruges. Brewing on
this sight has been going on since 1564 and the current family has owned the
place since 1856. They recently made the
news around the globe for putting in an underground beer pipeline. By the time the story got to America, it
sounded like the pipe would provide for free-flowing taps in homes and
businesses. The real story is more practical…
when the company expanded brewing operations, they ran out of space in the
tight center of town, so now the beer is piped to the new bottling facility two
miles away. The multi-million euro investment
was made because it was important to the family to keep the brewing operating
in the original location. It’s a nice
story and we celebrated it with a few more fresh beers, Stephan trying to order
me the strongest things on tap. (You’ll have to try harder next time buddy, I’ve
been practicing since I was 15…)
Well lubricated, it’s time for lunch. Adorable restaurant-bakery with a big communal
table running down the center. I over
order as the menu is nice and my beer brain is chanting “nom-nom-nom”. By the time we leave, it’s like another
day. The sky is blue, the sun is shining
and the wind has died down. We wander and
I retake some pictures now that we have a better backdrop. No trip to Bruges would be complete without
some of Belgium’s second most important product, so our hosts take us to
Dominique Persoone, purportedly the country’s finest chocolate. It is unbelievable. We buy waaaaay too much to bring home as
gifts so the shopkeeper give us a zippered cooler bag to transport our carry-on
bounty across the pond. On the way to
the car, stop at one more chocolate shop, Chocoladehuisje, for Mandy to pick up
the perfect mothers day gift for her dad.
Dinner is a special event that Stephan
and Isabelle have been planning for us for weeks. They tell us their friends Bart and Yori own Restaurant de Vijverhoeve we know we’re in for a treat, but it’s
not every day that a Michelin starred chef picks you up at the house in his SUV
in the middle of dinner service. The resturant
is situated in a restored farmhouse with a warm, sleek interior and finely
manicured grounds. Once seated, Yuri, a
seasoned sommelier, guides us through the wine list and explains the menu. We get the tasting menu which features fresh
local provisions, prepared elegantly, and served as some of the prettiest
dishes (and on some of the prettiest dishes) we have ever seen.
(click on the pictures to view full screen)
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