Day 33: Discovering Belgium and waffles and ice cream! (June 16):

 

A lot of times, we take pictures of street names to remind us where we park.

   Today we had breakfast at the Novotel, then packed up from Luxembourg and started driving the 3 1/2 hour drive to Brugge Belgium. Brugge, which at one point in time was the chief commercial city of the world (also often referred to as the Venice of the North) dried up and froze in time; resulting in an amazing place to visit!

    Once we arrived there, we checked in to our hotel and me and Dad found out that our room is only aloud to have four people! (we had 8). So we still kept our room and went to walk around Belgium. 

Sometimes it is busy, making sure everyone is not running into the streets or into oncoming pedestrians=)

It is famous for its chocolate, waffles, and beer! We go to see the cool bell tower- just as it is closing.

Then, we go in search of the church of the Holy blood, where they have a round vial, that contains a relic of the Holy Blood, allegedly collected by Joseph of Arimathea after prepraring Christ's body for the tomb, and brought from the Holy land to Brugge in 1150 after the second crusade, and has been kept there ever since.

At first we thought this was it, but we were wrong.

Then we found it right next door, in the corner.

The vial with the relic with Christ's blood.

   We stop and get waffles! Definitely a high light! (To this day, Peyton still says that was his favorite part of our entire Europe trip - in fact, last night, when I asked him to choose one country to go back to, he chose Brugge). The waffles are thick and sweet, with ice cream and sauces on top of that! Yum! We will definitely be making this a Smith tradition - maybe even weekly!  Mine had powder sugar, hot fudge and chocolate ice cream! It was delicious!

  We go to a chocolate shop and fill up a bag and enjoy it outside in a cute little plaza. 

 

 

 

We eat dinner and enjoy the crowds as there is a triathlon taking place in the city - how fun would that be!

 

 Over all, I would say that everyone thoroughly enjoyed Brugge

   We drove back to our hotel and decided we were going to put Peyton, Ashlynn and Kennedi in suitcases because they said a family of 4 (plus, we had a budget to stick to)!  We pulled the clothes out of three suitcases, just grabbing outfits for the next day, and Peyton, Kennedi and Ashlynn climbed in. I took Kennedi in and Dad took Peyton in. Kennedi did good and stayed in her suitcase, while Peyton started screaming. Benson starts coughing loudly and runs to the elevator with his noisy suitcase. He unzips it to tell Peyton to settle down and be quiet. The elevator door shuts just as some poor lady walks by and sees him zipping/smuggling a child into his suitcase! 

 We snuggle them in and all went to bed.

Our little pounds puppies.