chocolate, fries, and all that jazz

The warm weather is now distant memory, but I am loving the cold and I really hope it snows here. Speaking of the cold, I'm already wearing fuzzy socks at home. I love fuzzy socks.

Two weekends ago, I made a brief escape to Belgium with a friend thanks to a cheap flight ticket. This time, I was able to go to Brugge, where it was surprisingly very sunny, despite the cold temperature.

So, our train on Friday night was gloriously delayed by almost an hour. Not sure what happened, but because of the delay, the train didn't stop in Lille and directly went from Paris to Brussels. I guess we made up for lost time during that detour. Either way, by the time we got to our hotel, it was already past midnight. Waking up the next morning around 6h30 was a joy to catch the train around 8am to Brugge. During the entire hour train ride, we had to listen to a bunch of Spanish people talk while we were trying to get some sleep. They spent about 30 mins debating on the finer points of how to say "Brugge."  Half asleep, we heard, " So is it 'Brrrruge?' Brruha?' 'Bruuje?' For 30 MINUTES.

Brugge was beautiful, almost like Annecy but with a North European flavor. Beautiful and quaint little buildings with SO MUCH CHOCOLATE. I'm all chocolated out.

Beautiful little canals

Center square

Cute house

After visiting the chocolate museum and the diamond museum, we made our way back to the train station and headed back to Brussels to enjoy the rest of the time there. Having been there nearly four years ago, I still remember streets and sights and of course, Tintin. We mostly spent the rest of Saturday wandering about old town and visiting a lot of chocolate stores. THERE WERE SAMPLES OF EVERY CHOCOLATE in most of the stores.

We decided to skip going inside the Centre Belge de la Bande Desinée as I've been there before and my friend was content on going into the bookstore in there.

There's a musical instruments museum in Brussels featuring all different kinds of instruments from all over the world. I'd say that was a favorite of mine. Some instruments were pretty trippy though and makes you wonder how sounds could possibly be made from those.

From street musicians to fries to music in Brussels, I'd say it was a pretty good trip. Looking forward to more adventures to come in the next few weeks. The Fete des Lumières is the first weekend of December! I'm definitely looking forward to this as I've missed it for the past 3 years.

Paris tomorrow! Bon weekend, everyone!