Romantic Bruges to Celebrate 15 Years Together

We have made our journey from Paris to Belgium via our awesome car. Specifically, we headed to Bruges. Now Jeff and I knew nothing of this little town until our friend Tim brought it up to Jeff over some gin sitting on our back patio. We ended up watching the movie In Bruges with the kiddos the next night to get a feel for the city. We actually loved the dark comedy movie.

We decided this was where we would spend our 15th year anniversary. We splurged a bit on the Hotel Van Cleef and this hotel did not disappoint. Bruges has just a fascinating history. First mentions of the city were back in the 800s and the city became a prominent port city during the 12th century. The city has an incredibly romantic charm to it. However, it is not overly crowded and has plenty to do.

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We enjoyed a canal ride, took strolls through the park, ate fantastic food, and watched much sword fighting. The chocolate shops were EVERYWHERE. The boys were so sweet as they surprised Jeff an I with treats with their schoolwork money they had earned. Yes, they earn $10 for every treasure hunt sheet they complete. This amounts to about 25 assignments. A 1/2 sticker is earned if they receive an A on the assignment and a full sticker if they earn a 100%.

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As part of our romantic 3 days, the boys and I decided to visit the torture museum. Jeff elected to explore the city instead of joining because those types of things really bother him. All I can say is people can be absolutely diabolical. I mean, what the literal shit. How do people come up with this stuff?

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On to more positive things. Owen said the breakfast at the hotel was the best he has ever had in his whole life. Clearly he is forgetting all the amazing omelets and perfectly cooked medium eggs Jeff and I have made for him.

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One of the must-dos for Bruges is to climb the Belfry of Bruges located in the city center. This 366 step tower provides an amazing view of the city and has the biggest drum for ringing bells I have ever seen. The staircase gets quite narrow the higher you climb, so if you are claustrophobic, you may only climb so high.

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The other super fun thing we did was learn about “French Fries” from the Friet Museum. The Brugeites (my own word) are quite sensitive about this subject. So much so, they created these teriffying singing fries to explicitly tell you that fries come from Belgium, not France.

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Potatoes were really only introduced to Europe since the late 1600s. The origin of the potato is from Peru and came over to Europe during the Spanish Inquisition. Bruges being a major port city may have been some of the first to receive the tubers since it was occupied by the Spanish at the time.

We also toured the chocolate museum. It was quite informative but not as good in my opinion as the fry museum.

We ended our tour of Bruges researching real estate and business ownership rules. Nothing serious yet, however, it was worth doing a bit of research.