Windmills

After the long tour day we slept really well and headed down to breakfast around 9am. The breakfast room is very bright and nicely decorated. The food is pretty good with "German style" (bread, meat, cheese), American/British style (scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages) and Continental (yogurt, cereal, bread and pastries). We tried a pastry one morning but stuck to our granola, yogurt and a little bread most mornings. After breakfast we spoke to the desk clerk about the laundromat near the windmills that the young Australian woman on yesterday's tour told us about. This clerk marked it on our map and we headed off. It was an easy walk as it was on our own street. It was a large laundromat and pretty easy to figure out. With the wash going and T reading his book I walked to the windmills. I reached two of them along a canal and saw one of the old city gates and a charming cafe. The fence around one of the windmills was made to look like lace. So much cuteness that even 4 days is not enough.

 

I returned in time to move the laundry to the dryers and start my book. Once finished we headed back to the hotel to be ready to pack our now clean clothes tonight. We had lunch at a cafe nearby where T out ordered me with a great looking and tasting salad while I had a tartine (open faced sandwich). After lunch we strolled through town again. There was a craft fair in the old fish market and I enjoyed looking at and buying a few things. T and I split up for a bit and I visited the Kathe Wohlfarht Christmas store near our hotel. We had a couple of decaf coffees at a cute place facing a canal (one of the many cute places in Bruges) and then read menus for dinner. I found a shop with beautiful jewelry and a gardening/kitchen shop--jackpot! Fun to look but I didn't buy anything--too difficult to get home.

We decided to return to the restaurant where we ate dinner the first night. They had the best roast chicken ("kip" in Flemish) and chicken is on surprisingly few menus in Brugge. There is so much seafood, especially mussels, shrimp and salmon. I ordered chicken from the set menu while T selected salmon in chive sauce. Our table was outside under an awning but away from the heaters. While we were there T encouraged another couple reading the menu to come in. They ended up sitting at a table next to us and we enjoyed speaking with them very much. They live in Kent and were making this trip prior to the husband's hip replacement surgery. They had visited Brugge on their way to visit their son in Germany a couple years ago and ended up staying here instead of moving on to their planned stop. Now they wanted to come back and explore it some more. They were staying at the Hotel Navarra which they raved about and said they hadn't moved the car from the parking lot since they arrived. I do wonder how the man did on the all the cobblestones with a cane.

We said goodnight and walked the way they directed to spy the Hotel Navarra in a courtyard behind gates. It has a swimming pool and I do remember looking it up and finding it was pretty expensive. We enjoyed walking back to our hotel then packed for our train travel to London tomorrow.

Steps 23,472