Proposal in Bruges
We arrived in Bruges by train mid-afternoon around 2. It was a long walk from the train station to our Airbnb to drop our bags. We didn't waste any time seeing the city and even made it to 2 breweries. The first brewery, Bourgogne des Flandres, was pretty cool and had great beers and a laidback atmosphere. The thing that stuck out to me from that brewery was that they didn't squirt the glasses with water as they do in the States to wash off any beer that spilled over. Instead, they just dunked the filled glasses partially in the dishwater which cleaned off the sticky beer from the outside of the glass. That's apparently something that they do in Belgium that probably isn't that weird to them, but it was weird enough that the memory stuck with me.
I proposed to Katie at the second brewery, De Halve Maan. I wasn't sure which brewery I was going to propose at, but I planned on doing it some time while we were drinking. We have a tradition for us to save up memes for each other to share with each other when we're out drinking, so while she was scrolling through the memes on my phone I had saved up for her, I got out the ring box and proposed right after she scrolled to a Game of Thrones "Brace Yourself" meme with a caption that said "Brace yourself, a ring is coming", to which she looked up with a very expectant face fully knowing what was coming next.
The success of the day can't only be measured by the proposal, we also got two waffles during the day, the first one was a little too gooey in the middle, and I wasn't crazy about the caramel topping that I got on it but overall it was a successful waffle day.
We had dinner at a nice restraint that the owner of the Airbnb recommended, Gran Kaffee De Passage. We made the mistake of not making a reservation, but luckily we were early enough to get a seat at the small bar. The food was pretty good, but I really liked the place for the atmosphere and to watch the waiters. There were only 2 waiters for the 15-ish table restaurant, and they were running around like crazy the whole time - I can't believe they work like that every night! It was so busy when we were trying to leave that the waiter that took our order told me after about 10 minutes of waiting to ask the other waiter for our check because he wasn't going to get to it. The other neat thing from the waiter-watching was that the bartender scrapped the foam off the top of the beer glasses, as opposed to what I'm used to which is either over-filling to get the foam off or slowly pouring and topping the glass off after the foam settles. But I guess they didn't have time for either of those things, and it was neat and different than getting a beer in the States. Other than the waiter-watching, one of the coolest things about the meal was that we got a basket of fries with dinner - very similar to getting a basket of bread, but this was just a basket of fries.
Markt Square
At the center of the city there's a pretty large square that we headed to first.
Belfort
We didn't end up going up the Belfort tower, but it was a spectacular building towering over the Markt.
The First Brewery
The Bourgogne des Flandres was the first brewery that we went into.
First Flight in Belgium
Our first flight of beer in Belgium didn't disapoint. Katie and I like the funkier beers, which is what Belgium is known for. Interestingly, one of the beers they had on tap and part of the standard flight was a non-alcoholic IPA. For not having alcohol, it tasted pretty good.
Distortion
I used my wide angle lens quite a bit on this trip. Before I would have never been able to get a shot like this without stitching a hundred photos together, so it was nice to be able to capture it all in one shot. However, I wasn't happy with some of the distortion in some of the photos with the wide angle lens, but there isn't a whole lot that you can do about that when shooting so close to buildings and expecting to get all of it in the shot.
Church Doors
This is the doors to the Church of Our Lady Bruges in Bruges, Belgium.
Church of Our Lady Bruges
I was able to fix the distortion in this photo from the wide angle lens in post processing. This is a good example of where the wide angle (plus post processing) is a great lens to have with me.
Deteriorating
The wood on the door was deteriorating away which is what I focused on when I looked at this building.
Wild
This was my beer, but I had Katie pose in front of it. The beer was a Wild sour, and boy was it both wild and sour.
Before the Proposal
De Halve Maan had excellent lighting, so I wanted to take a few photos of Katie.
My Brugse Zot
This photo was taken right after I proposed. The best part is that she's holding a beer glass which has a Brugse Zot Beer in it, which translates to Bruge's Fool. She is my fool now and I couldn't be happier.
