On Saturday we checked out of our hotel and drove from
Alkmaar to Delft (in The Netherlands) to visit the Royal Delft factory. If you
don’t know what this is you will likely recognize it when you see it. It’s
porcelain that is painted to be white with brilliant blue pattern. It was
interesting to see the way they make them and everything remains hand-made.
From there we drove to Bruges, Belgium to visit the
lace-making factory. It was incredibly cool to see these ladies making lace by
hand with several bobbins at a time. They moved so fast! It’s a lost art and I
was glad we got to see it happen. Bruges is a beautiful city and we walked around looking at
the buildings and architecture. We came across a gorgeous old church, Burg
square and the Basilica of Holy Blood. We attempted to go to the Choco Story
museum but got there 15 minutes after closing time. I was bummed out and don’t
understand why most things in Europe close at 5 p.m. You would think the
tourism industry is so big they would want to stay open! By this time we were
hungry (and I may have been hangry) so we stopped for pizza and got one
margherita and one spicy pepperoni. It was very good and the crust was perfect!
Unfortunately pizza is not friendly with Brad’s diabetes and he was up a lot
during the night trying to control his blood sugar.
After Bruges we went to Belgium. It felt like a very crowded
and dirty town to me. We finally found a place to park, which was difficult
everywhere we went, and walked over to the Mannekan Pis. I’m not sure what the
purpose of this little peeing statue is but it was fun to see. Sometimes they
dress him in costumes that are brought as gift by visiting dignitaries. We
wanted to go to that museum and see his outfits as well but it was late and we
were tired. A couple blocks away is Grand Place which truly is grand. I sat
down and marveled at the architecture and history. The sun was starting to set
and it lit up the sky.
We stayed at a very nice hotel in Brussels called the Hotel
Thon Stephanie. It was quite fancy but the bed was like sleeping on the rock
hard floor! We were all exhausted and just wanted to sleep but it wasn’t a good
night for any of us. Too bad because we had an early start the next morning!
They're so adorable! We often find them sleeping like this.
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