BRUGES.
Oh my. What to say? Just a little bit epic. First things first : Bruges is not really a dump, it really is a feckin’ fairytale. I couldn’t quite believe how pretty Bruges was; cobbled streets, cute chocolate shops and a picturesque square… Colin Farrell, you lied to me!
Ciaran chose to go to Bruges for his 21st, and what a brilliant choice it was. Naturally he pretty much chose Bruges because of the film In Bruges, and it was fairly clear that we weren’t the only ones. Tourism took a surge upwards after the film was released by all accounts, and I imagine the locals get a little tired of silly Brits running around quoting the film word for word. By the way, if you haven’t seen In Bruges, then you should.
The highlight of the trip was giving Ciaran his long-awaited present. There’s an in-joke stemming from when we had a messy weekend in Amsterdam that Ciaran has a thing for waistcoats – I joked a while ago that I would make him a waistcoat for his birthday… and I did! (This is also the reason I didn’t post at all last week – time consuumiiiing!)
Look how happy he is! Unfortunately don’t have any pictures from the back, I was an idiot and forgot my memory card for my camera so didn’t get any proper pictures. Now, as Ciaran was semi expecting this, I tried to keep details such as fabric as secret as possible, meaning no posting on the blog about it. Now, due to a silly mistake on my part I ended up with about, oooooh, an extra 4 metres more than I needed… so I decided that matching skirts needed to be made.
These are the quickest damn skirts I’ve ever made!! Sadly they were a size too big, major fiddling had to be done to hide that, but it was OH SO FUNNY to see Ciaran’s face when we walked out wearing matching skirts. Now if that ain’t stashbustin’, I don’t know what is!
Here are some pictures courtesy of Beefagio’s camera of Bruges – such a feckin’ fairytale!
We were tourists and climbed up the tower, which was ridiculously narrow, but it had an amazing view from the belltower, and also a quote from In Bruges (albeit misquoted as I found when I went on IMDB…), pretty standard I’d say! If you were wondering why Birthday Boy is green, that would be because it was Wales vs Ireland that day… and Ireland won. Nothing more humiliating than being the only Welshies in an Irish pub full of students from Dublin when Wales loses.
All in all, amazing weekend. I rather liked Bruges, certainly was my cup of tea.
I loved Bruges. Of all the places I’ve visited in Europe, it was my favorite and I would love to go back. I’ve often entertained ideas of opening my own chocolate shop there when I feel like retiring. It looks like you had a lovely time!