Wednesday, December 5 we spent the day in Bruges.

I had a great nights sleep and woke up ready for the day. No jet lag. We saw a lot of interesting things and did a canal boat ride in the afternoon to rest our feet. We stopped at a small, almost hidden bar that we learned about on our walking tour yesterday. They serve a beer there that you can’t buy anywhere else. It was packed and they were going to turn us away until a lovely woman from Portugal invited us to share a table with her and her sister. She comes to Belgium annually to visit family in Brussels and when she does she always comes to Bruges for this beer. It was her sister’s first trip there. They were delightful to spend time with and it was a real highlight of my day. When we left there was a long line of people waiting to be able to go in. When it came time to find a place for dinner we were having trouble finding something. We ended up at an Irish Pub, as one does when they are in Belgium. We were then going to go on a 3.5 kilometer walk afterwards to see a series of special light installations, but after already walking almost 24,000 steps and 10+ miles we decided against it. We had already seen a couple of them anyway. It was a good day!