March 17, 2008 - The flight over & Brugge

The flight over was relaly good. We enjoyed excellent service and inspite of being in Economy we were made to feel like Royalty by the charming and extremely helpful inflight attendant called Rajat. We flew Jet Airways, a new airline from India, and I strongly recommend it to everyone. They outclass Lufthansa and the service even beats Emirates. Baby M was a natural traveller. We were worried the effect of air pressure on her, but she sucked her thumb and we were fine. She amused herself for a couple of hours, ate her food including parts of a paratha and then fell asleep for 5 hours.

Oh! JetAirways has those individual screens per seat with a selection of about 100 movies, plus games etc and took the opportunity to see "Elizabeth" something I have wanted to see for a long time. Then we each had our own personal menus and chose Chicken Tikka Masala, Daal, Rice, Paratha, Raita and Pickles. For dessert we had Rasmalai (Imagine getting a gourmet meal on Air Canada!).

We arrived safetly in Brussels and left our luggage at the lockers in the airport and headed by train to Brugge. This was Baby M's first train ride and after a couple of minutes our tired little explorer dozed off to sleep.

In brugge, we stayed at the Hotel OUD HUIS DE PEELART- it was lovely! Totally renovated, with 12ft ceilings, comfortable beds, Italian marble bathrooms and plenty of hot water. The breakfast was excellent as was the price for the property. (Tip: Call Hotels.ca and ask them for a further 10% off the room price - the operators can give it to you. )

We've been able to get a fair bit of sightseeing done in Brugge. Brugge is known for 3 things gastronimic: Mussels, Chips and Chocolates.

Mussels: Last night, we ate at a Brugge insitution called BREYDEL DE CONINC known for it's excellent seafood. We had large pots (yes, pots not plates) of mussels. I can honestly say that I am totally musseled out. At one sitting, I have eaten more mussels than in the last 10 years!

Chips: We found out here that French Fries originated in Belgium and not France. Now, we are certainly not chip gourmets but the chips here tasted pretty much the same as anywhere else.

Chocolates: Chocolate shops everywhere! Infact there is so much of chocolate in Brugge that my husband has for some strange reason lost his desire to eat it. (And this is a man who finishes one box of chocolates in 2 hours!). You cannot walk a corner without finding at least 2 chocolate shops. We visited the chocolate museum here. Very informative, but really, we were just looking for the different chocolates they give us to sample and were kind of dissapoined that we only got to eat 3 pieces in 30 minutes. However it was interesting to learn a bit about the cocoa bean. Did you know that 65% of all harvest comes from Africa? I didn't. We picked up some Cococa Powder with Matcha - an interesting taste for sure.

We've also taken Baby M on her first boat ride, a tour through the canals of Bruge. She was interested in the part where you got on the boat, but once we were all seated and the boat started to go, she kind of dozed off in the slight breeze. It appears that Brugge was not levelled in WWII so a lot of the buildings standing are in their original state - some are simply beautiful.

Eventhough we've been walking the whole day, we've only really touched the surface of what Brugge has to offer.

After the mussels and the Waterzooi (a stew made of seafood, wine and cream -yummy! ) we're inspired enough to wake up early and head to the fish market in the morning to check out the fresh catch of the day.