30 in Bruges

Turning 30 turned out to be pretty great! It feels crazy to have entered into a new decade, but I'm so thankful for everything going on in my life right now.  It's also crazy to think that I'll be a mother this year, wow.  Here's how the bump is coming along:

I'm definitely starting to look more preggers now, which I'm enjoying. And I'm understanding why everyone says the second trimester is the best - I feel great!

My birthday weekend was a success.  On the actual day I had a lovely lunch with friends and then we hosted a dinner party at night.  It was a perfectly low key way to celebrate the day.  Then the next morning Todd and I set off for Bruges for the rest of the weekend.   We took along Jack, figuring it would be her last time to live the life of a Euro-dog (i.e. she can come into every restaurant and cafe).    We had only been to Bruges once before, so I was so glad we had a chance to get back to this beautiful city.

Our weekend revolved around walking and eating, as you'll see from our photos.   We started with lunch at a cute place near our hotel, with some pretty great opening hours (the place was owned by a British couple):

And it was very cute inside as well.

Afterwards, we spent the rest of the afternoon walking around with Jack and exploring the city.  Jack was intrigued by all of the horse drawn carriages.  I wonder if she thought the horses were just extremely large dogs.

One of the many bridges in town.

Out and about, getting rather soggy, but not too bad.

Aren't they cute? 

Of course there were waffles to be eaten. So good. And not the only one of the weekend.  I'm eating for 2 after all.

Horse!

She was a very good girl.

The rain came on and off, but it was never too heavy, so we managed to walk around for hours.  After dropping (and drying) off Jack at the hotel, we proceeded to happy hour and then dinner.  Happy hour was at one of our favorite spots in town, a small bar down an even smaller alleyway called De Garre.  You may remember us going here with our visitors Jon and Christina last year.  They have one of the best beers I've ever had,  the De Garre tripel, served with some delicious cheese.  And although I couldn't drink the beer this time around, the cheese went mighty fine with my iced tea.

The entry to the alleyway.

Todd did enjoy the beer; actually he enjoyed a few during our time.  Here's your fix of Todd holding beers in his right hand for the week:

For dinner, we went to the Vlaamsche Pot, which makes traditional Flemish dishes.  We both got the house specialty, and it came in a massive pot that we got nowhere near to finishing.  But it was oh so good.

The next day, the weather had cleared up completely, allowing us to do more walking.  We started on the outskirts of the city center, where there are these beautiful old windmills.

We then proceeded to one of the city gates.

Jack was loving the blue sky.

The main market square was looking particularly lovely. I think it was the first time we had seen the belfry in the sunshine.

Can't beat that.

We stopped for a drink at the Halve Maan brewery, which we had toured last time.  They have a modern tasting room where Todd tasted beer and I tasted hot chocolate.

Jack did great under the table.

We then continued walking, stopping for lunch along the way, and trying to soak in the city as much as possible.

My favorite canal view.

The begijnhof, a nunnery.

What a fabulous weekend exploring one of my favorite smaller European towns.  On the way back to Eindhoven, we stopped at another beer locale, the trappist brewery Westmalle.  No visitors are allowed on the grounds of the abbey or in the brewery, so the closest we got was the cafe across the street called the Cafe Trappisten.  The cafe was totally packed, but we managed to grab a seat outside in the sun.  

I loved having one last weekend away just the 3 (and a half) of us in Europe. I am truly going to miss the ease of travel to awesome places here!