Belgium - part 4

Ghent from our hotel room
Ghent
Christmas eve day was light for us. Our main target was to get to Ghent where we’d be staying for the next 2 nights at a posh hotel near the city center. Along the way, we decided to stop in the tasting room of Ellezelloise (pronounced el-zel-woz) since we enjoyed their Hercule stout so much. It was a rather large tasting room and I bet they pull in a nice crowd in the summer. Today, however, we were the only two there. We sampled their other beers and bought some to take with us. They were recently bought by another brewery, so we also picked up some beers from the new owners for tasting later. You know, just in case we couldn’t find any beer on Christmas day. Oh the horror that would be.

Snubbed
When in Ghent, skip a bar called Het Damberd. We went in there for beers, and were totally snubbed by the girl behind the bar. I don’t know what her deal was, but she was not at all interested in serving us so we left and got some frites instead. Ghent has been the tourism stepchild to Bruges and Brussles for a long time. They’re starting to draw more tourists, but I think the town in general has a chip on its shoulder.

Christmas in Belgium
Christmas was a spectacular day. It was the first day we hadn’t set a wake up alarm and we luxuriously slept in before eating breakfast at the hotel. It’s hard not to love a place that puts out champagne with the rest of the breakfast items. When we finally rolled out of the hotel, our first stop was back at In de Verzekering Tegen de Grote Dorst (more details in my other post about this place).

Christine's favorite beer. A Christmas gift from the lambic paradise that is In de Verzekering Tegen de Grote Dorst

Next stop, Bruges. Bruges is the only place we’d been to in Belgium before this trip. It’s touristy but cute and we like it. True to form, there was a Christmas market and it was quite lively. We walked around for a little while and then headed for a bar we wanted to check out, Brugs Beertse. At first we thought they weren’t going to be open, but then we figured out that they would be opening in 15 minutes. We killed some more time by walking around some more of the festival and made it back to the bar about 20 minutes after they opened. In that short amount of time, the place was packed and we got the last table. It’s a cozy place with beer paraphernalia on the walls and an awesome beer list. I wish we were staying in Bruges so we could hang in this friendly place and drink beer all night. We found a couple more of our favorite beers here: Kappitel Prior (carmely goodness), and Echt Kriekenbier (a sour kriek).

Picturesque Bruges	Enjoying festival food in Bruges
Brugs Bertje	Tower in Bruges

Back to Ghent and the task of the night was laundry. Clean clothes, a Christmas gift to ourselves. We passed the time by bringing our own beer.

Hanging at the laundromat