8/11/2016
Bruges/Paris
Hello and good morning from Bruges!! This morning we had a walking tour through town-- it was actually raining thoughout the whole thing, which was a little sad. This town is so neat and beautiful. I would have loved beautiful weather.
One of the churches we stopped at, The Church of Our Lady, held the only Michelangelo sculpture outside of Italy. "The Madonna of Bruges" is Mary with the child Jesus. Pretty awesome!
I stole this from Wikipedia to tell you about the next church-- The Basilica of the Holy Blood is a Roman Catholic minor basilica in Bruges. Originally built in the 12th century as the chapel of the residence of the Count of Flanders, the church houses a venerated relic of the Holy Blood allegedly collected by Joseph of Arimathea and brought from the Holy Land by Thierry of Alsace, Count of Flanders. Built between 1134 and 1157, it was promoted to minor basilica in 1923.
Bruges is such a cool little town. The tour was interesting and we saw some really beautiful churches. After the tour, we did a tiny bit of shopping, bought some more chocolates and finally... we arrive at the world famous Belgium hot chocolate. Heaven in a glass. Basically (I THINK) they just melted a bunch of chocolate and handed it to me. It was so rich, so thick and so perfect.
Now we're headed to Paris by bus. I slept the majority of the way. We stopped for lunch at this huge-- basically truck stop-- which really kills my romantic relationship with Paris.
We make it to Paris, check in to our hotel, Brian and I basically left two seconds later to explore. We walked so long and so. far. We were looking for somewhere to eat but not just anywhere. We visited so really high volume areas-- Notre Dame, Luxembourg Gardens-- people everywhere! We picked this cute bistro across from the gardens for dinner... after much deliberation and googling.
We ordered a meat tray first-- followed by bread and wine. For our main courses-- Brian chose the lamb chops and I went with a pasta. It was so nice! So perfect. We loved sitting outside at this cute bistro and just taking in all Paris had to offer-- the sights and sounds of Paris I'm so in love! With this city, this trip and my handsome, lovely husband.
After dinner we did some more walking-- again, past Notre Dame, down the river, to the Lourve, looking for the Opera house. I promise you that we walked the whole entire city. We finished the day at just under 10 miles.
We ended up saving our feet a little and took the metro back. It was a perfect, magnificent night. I even had my 1st Paris crepe. YUM.