Bruges

Bruges really was the highlight of our trip to Belgium. It is such a cool city!! I wish we could have spent more there, but it is definitely on the list of places we want to go back to. What makes the city so charming are the buildings. Most of them are centuries old, and some even 1,000 years old. Very "medieval" looking and also has several canals that run through the city. It is jam packed with tourists with lots of neat things to see. There are a ton of chocolate shops and tea rooms to indulge the sweet tooth (Addy and I loved this). We could have spent a week just walking around the city, and I have so many pictures of the cool architecture. I really could have taken a picture of EVERY building in town. One of the best things we did was take a horse and carriage tour around town. Our tour guide gave us lots of good info and it was so fun for the kids too!

Here is a picture of the center of town, the market:

Another view of the market:

One of the little side streets-- everything was picture worthy in this city!

There was a clown just walking around town blowing up balloons for kids, so that explains Addy's cool hat:

Getting ready to take off on our horse carriage ride!

We stopped halfway through the ride so our horse could have a snack. This was one of the canals that ran through town. There are many houses and buildings that sit in the middle of the canals:

Our stop at a tea room. Belgian waffles are BIG here, but mostly as an afternoon dessert with tea:

Jeff's waffle with chocolate and vanilla ice cream!

We did take a tour of the chocolate museum. It wasn't really all that exciting, just a lot of history of chocolate. It gave us something to do and a way to stay dry (it rained a little when we first got to town, but it stopped shortly after our arrival). They also gave us a few samples that we enjoyed!

Chocolate statue