breakfasting in Bruges.

A great night's sleep, followed by the most amazing breakfast, was exactly what was needed.

The breakfast room is set over two floors, the upper room that you walk into looks out into the courtyard, or you can make your way down some small stairs, into the vaulted cellar. 

Greeted at the door with the question "how would you like your eggs?" is how the perfect Good Morning, and something I feel should be installed into every day society. 

The top table was hidden with copious amounts of food, fresh breads, brioche, meats, fruits, pastries, jams and honey, Belgian chocolate spread (which controversially I might even put above Nutella), cheese, teas, coffee... Anything you could ever want was there. 

After truly pigging out at breakfast (justified with the classic excuse 'we won't have to eat lunch') we set off to explore. 

The sun was shining, and the cold wind from the night before had settled down. 

Walking through the square, we set off in a random direction, past the fish market and down a road into a a busy little area. Slowly, as we walked along the long road, everything changed from tourist-themed shops full of beers, cheap chocolates, and I heart Bruges memorabilia, and turned into small businesses, corner shops, pharmacists and small tabacs.

This is the side of a city I love to see. The everyday side, where people work, shop and live. It might not be as pretty as the tourism-saturated areas, but you do get to see the real city - and that's really what it's all about. 

Towards the end of the road, there was a small beer shop specialising in Trappist glasses. Inside the store had walls full of glasses, and their corresponding beers. So use to drinking from a plain pint glass, or a Strongbow branded one if the pub is feeling a little sassy, I was amazed. Much like wine glasses, Belgian beer glasses are shaped to enhance the taste and aroma of the drink, hence why there were so many different shapes and styles for each of the hundreds of beers. 

I picked up a few different ones for the males in my family, the perfect christmas stocking filler along side a cold beer, and we carried on through the busy high street. 

A turn saw us end up along side an old, closed museum (it may have been for teddy bears, it may have just had an old raggedy teddy bear in the window...) , and then into a part of the city I hadn't seen before.