What can I say about Bruges that you don’t already know. It’s stupidly gorgeous. It’s full of cobblestone walkways and winding roads that open up into an array of courtyards. There are more Belgium chocolate shops in this one little town that all the coffee shops in Vancouver combined (I bet). On one street we counted four in a row. Four shops that sold endless combinations of Belgium chocolate. Simple milk chocolate squares, flavoured bricks with chilli or orange or coconut, elaborately decorated chocolates that looked like animals or people or beer (Belgium’s other favourite vice), blocks on sticks that could be stirred into frothed milk and sold as creamy hot chocolates to go: it was endless. It was amazing.

We spent our short time in Bruges finding the perfect balance between hot chocolate and beer. An afternoon hot chocolate in the square meant we could stop at the Halve Maan brewery for a quick pint. Then a taster at La Trappiste, a medieval, underground pub, meant we deserved a creamy hot chocolate for the walk home. It was a tough couple days. 

But the magic of Bruges isn’t in the beer or the chocolate. The best part of Bruges is the town itself. It’s the perfectly preserved homes. It’s the winding streets and slowly moving river. And there’s no way to really describe that. So I will let the photos tell the rest…