Belgium - October 5 - Back to Bruges

Even before leaving for London, we had decided to spend two of our Belgium days in Bruges, and I'm so glad that we did. In hindsight, we should have made Bruges our Belgium home base. It would have meant a little bit longer train rides, but our evenings would have been much lovelier. Anyway...we got one more day to experience this magnificent city. It started with a visit to St. Salvator's Cathedral, which is Bruges' oldest parish church, and it had a remarkable collection of Flemish tapestries and paintings. We visited a few shops and sampled some more chocolates before heading to the De Halve Maan brewery tour. The tour was excellent, and the most interesting points were the old sections of the brewery that are no longer in active use, but still kept pristine for tour purposes. All of their beer is still brewed in the original building in the center of Bruges, but the company has outgrown that small location, so the aging and the bottling are done off-site about 3 kilometers away. Driving trucks/tankers in and out of Old Town Bruge became something of a nightmare, so their solution was to build a 3 KM Beer Pipeline from the old brewhouse to the bottling site. It runs right under the city, and rumors abound about locals who have illegally "tapped" into the pipeline. However, our tour guid assured us that the "beer" running through the pipeline was not yet drinkable. But, the free beer that was included after the tour was definitely drinkable! After a brewery tour and a quick lunch, what was the next logical step? Chocolate making...of course. We did a Belgian Chocolate Workshop with two other couples - also from the U.S. - and it was a ton of fun. The melted chocolate was waiting for us, but we had to make the ganache. We scooped the chocolate into the molds, tapped out the excess and cooled them in the fridge. While the shells were cooling, we made "pralines", which was basically globs of chocolate piped from a piping bag, and then we added nuts and dried fruit to the top. While those were in the cooler, we filled our original chocolate shells with ganache, caramel, fruit fillings, etc. and then added more chocolate to seal them up. And...while everything was cooling down one more time...we drank hot chocolate...of course. It was a ton of fun. We explore Bruges for a couple more hours and then had a great meat a The Mozart Restaurant, which has massive portions. Nancy ordered a chicken skewer that was the size of her head! I would definitely return to Bruges! PS: The only thing bigger than Rubens in Belgium is The Smurfs - which were apparently created a Belgian cartoonist - Pierre Culliford.