Brugge – 24 June 2010

Day 2 in Brugge

We enjoyed a very nice breakfast here of pastry selection, fresh fruit, cheeses, bread, eggs made any style we wanted, homemade fruit smoothies, coffee, tea, juice and a chocolate.  It was a beautiful set-up.  The B&B only has 3 rooms for rent.  The other room was being used by a couple who was on their honeymoon who happened to be from Philadelphia.  How crazy is that?!?  Joel had met them the night before when they returned from watching the soccer game out at a bar.  Their names were Drew and Lynn.  Ok..so on with our schedule for today…we were supposed to have access to bikes from the B&B; however, 2 of the bikes were pretty badly wrecked from prior visitors.  We went and rented 4 bikes and went on our search for the only central brewery.  We happened upon it by accident.  The next tour was about 20 minutes away, so we walked around.  I found a Christmas ornament shop…watch out!  I bought a little something for our niece, Phoebe, but had plans to go back later since this place had about a million ornaments.  We had a great tour of De Halve Maan Brewery (the Half Moon) which was resurrected in 2005 and is currently the only brewery still working in the centre of this ancient city.  The tour guide here was extremely animated and entertaining!  We all felt this was the best brewery tour we’d ever experienced.  From there, we rode off to go to a town called Damme.  All over Brugge there are walkways and bike paths.  You must abide by the proper pathway.  We realized at one point that we were on the walkway, so we crossed over a grassy area to pop onto the bike path.  Well, that was the plan anyway.  I hit a rather large jump in the grass to pathway at a pretty good clip and lost control of my bike enough that I couldn’t get it on the bike path.  So, I crossed over the bike path into another patch of grass which was alongside the canal and happened to have a large concrete block of some sort with rusty rebar.  I did NOT want to fly into the canal, so I opted to slam on the brakes and ended up wrecking and hitting the concrete thus causing me to slide off my seat and entangling in the bike.  I was bleeding, scraped and had bumps and lumps all over my lower legs.  My left shin had a lump about 1/4″ off the bone.  I had no clue what all happened, but I knew I was hurting and would not be able to continue the ride to Damme.  Joel and Walt continued on while Deeb and I headed back to the B&B to get my packed in ice.  This was no easy feat even though we were only about 5 minutes away according to Joel.  Deeb got turned around on the map we had which took us on about an hour tour of Brugge.  I was riding the bike wincing with almost every pedal with my right leg.  I had hit it in such a way that it didn’t look like it was really hurt, but it had some kind of bruise/swelling happening behind the knee cap.  I finally found one road that was on the map that we could figure out where we were in conjunction to the B&B.  We unfortunately had to ride through the central market to get back which has cobblestone roads.  We were riding toward traffic on very narrow roads at rush hour with people walking all along the sidewalks who kept stepping down onto the road in front of us.  Argh!!!  Get me the freak back….my knee is killing me (as I’m saying in my head).  All I said to Dave though was, “Can you please get me off this road heading toward traffic because this is making me really nervous?”  We finally were just minutes away from the B&B.  We got back and Dave got me set up with ice packs and then headed out to the Apoteek  (pharmacy) to get me some ibuprofin.  I forgot to mention that on top of my pain, Dave’s bike chain kept popping off, so his temper was really flaired…which is why I didn’t need to add to it by complaining.  After he got me set up with the ice, ibuprofin, an apple, and Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl, he went back out to get us some lunch.  We had just finished our sandwiches and not long afterwards Joel and Walt arrived back at the Charming Brugge.  We hung out for a while and relaxed…nobody else was there for quite a while.  Once the owners arrived back home, we asked them for dinner recommendations.  Our plan was to return 2 of the bikes and go back to De Halve Maan Brewery to try the darker beer and buy some t-shirts.  Walt and I took a taxi so I wouldn’t have to walk.  I took the opportunity while there to run back into the Christmas shop.  I noticed that I was better walking than I was sitting.  If I sat too long, my knee actually hurt more.  We had a good dinner at the restaurant the owners suggested; although Walt didn’t care for the fact that he had to debone his fish.  We had all been trying to be careful about our meal selections based on what we knew of how the fish is regularly presented.  I CANNOT debone!  If I received some fish with bones, Deeb would have had to switch meals with me.  We arrived back at the B&B and sat chatting with Christophe and Alice for a while.  They both work full-time jobs on top of running the B&B, so we headed up to bed around 11:00  so they would get some sleep before needing to get up to prepare breakfast, take Clarice to school and head off to work.  Alice’s mom helps her with the breakfast in the morning which is a HUGE help to them.


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