Thursday, March 17th (Part 3)

[Jared]:  We finished our beers and headed back out into the mist.  After a short walk along some of the beautiful canals, we made our way to the church of our lady.  The highlight here was a Michelangelo sculpture which is said to be the only one to have left Italy during Mich's lifetime.

We continued our stroll through Bruges and took some time to step inside a few reputable chocolatiers.  Their selection was vast and the quality and flavor surpassed my high expectations.  Notable creations we discovered here include a Havana chocolate - a truffle made with an infusion of Cuban tobacco - and a bacon truffle!  I could have eaten an entire box of the bacon chocolate.  Good lord, so tasty.

After our chocolates, we were ready to be even more adventurous.  I was anxious to tour a few of the many historic windmills in Bruges.  To do so, however, required renting a pair of bicycles and biking a few miles to the outskirts of downtown.  Although it was a chilly ride, Beth and I had lots of fun.  We love biking through European cities (ok, well, Bruges and Paris anyway) as it is the best way to see and experience parts of the city that you might not otherwise visit.  We passed historic buildings, rolled through beautiful courtyards, and followed the canals.  Finally we made it to the windmills!  [Side note: I once (along with two high school friends) built a pretty rockin working replica of a windmill for the Illinois state history fair.]  These windmills were amazingly well preserved and offered terrific views of the city.  I am so glad we were able to see them.

The ride back to Markt Square was even more canalicious (which is to say, we saw even more of the canals). We also crossed a few cute little bridges.  By the time we made it back to the square, all the lights were beginning to turn on and the city center had a beautiful glow about it.

With just a few hours left before catching our train back to Brussels, we decided some libations and sustenance were in order.  To satisfy our cravings we stopped by a beer hall recommended by some friends and then picked up some famous Belgian fries from a little shack on the square.  These turned out to be the best fries of the trip by far.  They were warm and golden and just flat out good. We liked them so much we posed in a few pictures with them.

Finally, we made our way back to the train station.  As you can imagine we were utterly exhausted - but the best kind of exhausted.  We made it back to Brussels and headed to bed to prepare for an early trip to Paris in the morning.

Thursday, March 17th (Part 2)

[Jared]: First, some exciting news. Today an essay about our trip to Belgium appeared in the San Diego Union Tribune! Check it out...

Thus I thought it fitting to conclude the blog series for the Belgian portion of our trip.  Don't worry, France is still to come.  I'm sure we'll get through it by the end of the summer.

As Beth said in her last Brussels post, Thursday was only a half day for the conference.  Unfortunately one of the topics I was most interested in was covered in the last session of the day or I would have slipped away sooner.  After the session, I bolted for the metro so that I could meet up with my wife at the train station.  She was so kind as to pick up some sandwiches and salads for our train ride.  She also carried a suspicious amount of empty chocolate boxes.  :-)  Kidding!  She brought us lots of truffles to share on the ride.

We were able to catch a train even earlier than we expected which had us in a good mood from the start since it meant more time in Bruges.  We settled in for a smooth and comfortable ride.  I know Beth is the transportation geek in the family, so you might expect she'd be the one to sing the praises of trains, but seriously - high speed rail rules.  After lunch I tasted one of my favorite chocolates of the trip.  It was a whiskey truffle.  So good.  Unfortunately, I was expecting more of a whiskey-flavored creamy filling and was therefore caught off-guard when it turned out the center was filled with... a shot of whiskey.  In addition to our chocolate, we enjoyed reading, listening to podcasts, and a misty view of the countryside which included a few wind farms.

The train drops you off a good distance from the historic city center in Bruges, so the first thing we did was hop on a bus.  Eventually we hopped off at the Markt Square.

This historic square was even more charming than the Grand Place in Brussels, if less grandiose.  We quickly got our bearings and set off on another famous Rick Steves walking tour.  Our first stop was the Basilica of the Holy Blood.  Ever since college I've been fascinated by church architecture and this site was no exception.  The lower chapel was very dark and Romanesque, while the upper chapel was ornate and Gothic.  The upper chapel contains a vial which is said to contain drops of Jesus Christ's blood.  Supposedly the vial was brought to Bruges during the second crusade.

Next we headed where any fun loving (reformed) Christians might go... to the brewery!  I've been on several tours of modern breweries, but never enjoyed a tour as much as this one.  It was amazing to see some of the equipment and learn the processes people have been using for centuries.  I was especially blown away to learn about the spontaneous fermentation process used to produce lambics.  Due to a variety of geographical factors, there are wild yeasts and bacterias present in the air surrounding Brussels and Bruges.  The wort is simply pumped onto copper vats on the roof and exposed to the air.  Fermentation occurs and voila... delicious beer.  Our tour guide also hit us with this piece of wisdom:

All profits from Trappist beers are given to the poor.  So, in Belgium we say, if you drink a Trappist beer you have done your good deed for the day!

Some of the most beautiful views of our trip were from atop the brewery.  It occurs to me that I have yet to mention that in addition to medieval architecture, Bruges also boasts canals throughout the city.  If it hadn't been drizzly, we would have certainly taken a cruise.

And what brewery tour would be complete without a free sample?

To be continued...

May I Offer a Recap?

[Jared]:  Get it?  May?  A quick hit list of what we've been up to...

We saw a baby hippo swimming at the zoo and fish swimming at the aquarium.

I spent a week in the desert for a work trip.

Then we went on a weekend camping trip with our church.

Next, some friends from Virginia stopped by for a visit.  We cooked for them and took them to the Wild Animal Park.

We went wine tasting!

We did some spring cleaning (yeah, no picture for that one).

I spent a few days in Anaheim for the AWEA WindPower conference.  We got a private night at Disney!

We went to two Cardinals-Padres games and took a stadium tour of Petco.

Finally, we went on a long bike ride this morning.

All this blogging is making me thirsty.

Dessert? Beats, please!

[Beth]: Lately I have been doing a lot of baking, so I wanted to write a quick post about those adventures!  We often get beets in our CSA from Be Wise Ranch, and we are trying to find new ways to enjoy them.  We have gotten to where we like them just roasted in the oven.  But recently we got a recipe for beet cake.  Hmmm, I thought.  I do like cake, but do I really want to put veggies in my cake?  Granted, I do love carrot cake.  So I decided to give it a try!

The recipe was pretty basic and actually seemed quite similar to carrot cake (complete with cream cheese frosting).  It was the most fun grating up the beets in the food processor.  Check out the beautiful colors:

Well, the cake turned out delicious!  It definitely tasted (subtly) of beets, but it was super moist and the frosting was yummy.

Since the beet cake was such a success, I decided to try another recipe: chocolate beet bread.  But when I say recipe, I should say "experiment."  I found several recipes online for chocolate beet cake baked in the oven with no yeast.  And then I found a recipe for beet bread, but without chocolate.  No chocolate?  Really?!  So I decided to be bold and try to merge the two recipes.  I have a fair amount of experience with making various breads in our bread maker, but this was new territory.  Overall, crafting the recipe wasn't too difficult, and the bread came out fluffy and moist.  But it tasted too much like beets and not nearly enough of chocolate.  Note to self: in the future use about one cup cocoa powder instead of 3 tablespoons.

Finally, my birthday was last week, and we decided to make a cake for the big day.  Jared suggested German Chocolate cake, which we both really like and hadn't ever made.  We found a great recipe online and got started.  It was a bit complicated in that the cake is 3 layers and we only have 2 round pans.  It took a couple of hours to make the cake, between the shifting and reusing of pans and all.  The icing was really easy, though, and then it was time to assemble.  Like the previous baking attempts, the cake turned out wonderfully moist and perfectly sweet.  Happy birthday to me!!

Thursday, March 17th

[Beth]: This will be a short post, as we split Thursday into two parts.  In the morning, Jared went to the last few sessions of his conference, while I did more sight-seeing.  About 1pm, we caught a train for Bruges.  That will be another post.

Thursday morning I went to the City Museum, which is a small but fun museum right on the Grand Place.  The top floor has a chronological history of the city, with a fascinating photography section displaying pictures from 100 or so years ago next to pictures taken in the same places in 2008.  It was a creative way to show how much the city has (or in some cases has not) changed over time.

The museum also has all of the costumes of the Mannekin Pis.  Over the years, nearly all countries have sent costumes to be displayed on the statue for a time.  The variety of costumes from around the world was amazing – a few of my favorites are below.

Along with the costume displays, the museum also had a video of people’s reactions to the statute.  It plays on a loop, and was pretty hilarious to watch.  I think the little kids were the funniest.  They would say things like “He’s going to get in trouble with his mom,” or “He just keeps on going!”  I definitely watched the video for a good 25 minutes.

After the museum and before meeting Jared to catch our train, I went on a bit of a choco-crawl, as Rick Steves calls it.  On the Grand Place are four of the most famous chocolatiers in Belgium: Godiva, Neuhaus, Galler, and Leonidas.  Godiva is pretty famous world-wide, but the others are less well-known.  Galler is family-run, doesn’t export, and is the royal favorite.  Leonidas is not handmade but you get the most chocolates for your euro.  Even though I had sampled many of the varities during the week, it’s not too surprising that none of the truffles I bought made it back to Jared.  So I stopped at all four shops and bought about 4 to 6 truffles from each.  It was going to be a good train ride to Bruges!

 

Wednesday, March 16th

[Beth]: Wednesday was our fourth full day in Brussels, and I really felt comfortable in the city.  I knew how to get everywhere, so it was a day where I felt less like a tourist and more like a local.  In the morning, I went to the Royal Museum of Fine Arts and got to see Belgian and Flemish art from the 14^th to 18^th centuries.  The modern art section was closed for renovations, but that was ok.  I really am not a huge fan of modern art (although I will shortly contradict myself when I mention the Magritte Museum).

For lunch and the early afternoon, I feel I truly became a local Belgian.  I grabbed a sandwich and water from the local, small grocery store and headed towards the laundromat.  Jared and I are notorious over-packers – sometimes we are really too organized and prepared for our own good.  THIS trip, though, we vowed to pack light and enjoy the freedom of each having only one medium-sized suitcase.  Since the trip was 10 days, this necessitated doing laundry during the trip.  I spent about two hours at the laundromat with a few college kids and a housewife.  I even managed to help a woman who spoke no English with her washing machine!

For the afternoon, I walked to Upper Town (more truffles!) to the Musical Instruments Museum.  It is housed in an Art Nouveau building which used to be an Old English department store.  It was four floors of an amazing range of musical instruments.  Sadly, Jared didn’t get to see it – I know he would have loved it.  There wasn’t a lot of reading or history; you had headphones which would start playing music associated with each instrument when you stood in front of it.  There was some great music!

Once Jared finished his day at the conference, we went to the Magritte Museum as it was open late that evening.  As I said before, I am not much for modern art.  Rene Magritte was a Surrealist painter of the early to mid-1900’s.  I really really enjoyed this museum and his artwork.  We could get a strong sense of his progression from more classical style and composition into the surrealism for which he is famous.  The thing that I especially relished about his paintings was the fact that he used and depicted familiar objects, but in unusual context or juxtaposition.  Some examples are below.

After the museum, we walked to a restaurant recommended by one of Jared’s friends who lived in Brussels for several years.  It was a hole in the wall place that we would never have found on our own.  But it was an amazing atmosphere and scrumptious food.  The restaurant was quite small and for most of our meal we had the upstairs dining rooms to ourselves.  The walls were completely covered in old tins, steins, and decorative plates of the royal family.

Not surprisingly, we each got a tasting menu and some more beers.  Our waiter was especially friendly and helpful in choosing several beers.  The foie gras was perfect, the main courses were superb, and we finished with some waffles!

Finally, on the walk back to our hotel, we came across this mural on the side of a building.  Tin Tin is a Belgian comic that popped up everywhere!