Day 03: Belgium & Netherlands

Its 9 in the morning, Akhil worked for few hours (remember we work from home) and then we grabbed a quick cup of Tea and decided to visit Grand Palace & Manneken-Pis. On the way we met a did the Grand Palace was full of Waffle shops and the fragrance .. Ummmm. We surely did not miss the opportunity and grabbed one 🙂

We strolled around Grand Palace, Manneken Piss, clicked few pictures, had a little drive around in Brussels city and then we started towards Brugge by 2PM.

Brugge has been in my list for long time now. Especially after watching “The monuments Men”. If you have seen the movie, I am sure you know what I am taking about. “Ghent” and “Church of our Lady” both were in our list but due to limited time we decided to do just “Church of our lady”. We reached the museum but a little too late as the area was closed where “Church of our Lady” is kept <Heartbroken>!! The saving grace however was the doorman who gave in to my cat eyes and let us in to have a glimpse of church excluding the main area which is other side of the church. “Church of our Lady” is Michelangelo’s last painting and we really wanted to see but due to shortage of time and since we had to be in Amsterdam same day, we decided to continue and promised each other to come again to Brugge and do it peacefully 🙂

For all Belgium fans: I must say you need 2 nights stay if you really want to enjoy Brugge. It’s one of the most beautiful towns I have even been and definitely very underrated. It’s like stepping back in time. Everything is so pretty, boats all around, pubs around canal, medieval buildings, stunning architecture, those cobbled lanes with beer museums, chocolate factories, diamond shops, vintage tea rooms – Ahh!! What a beautiful walk in the town! It is 27 degrees today and we are making most of it 🙂

We left Brugge around 1700 hrs and reached Kontich by 1800 hrs to meet other friends on chai. We stayed with them for an hour and then drove to Amsterdam. After 3 hrs of driving, we realized that we are heading down south … Nooooo!! I had accidentally used wrong post code 🙁 and now we are delayed by 3 hours! So took a U-Turn and we reached Amsterdam around midnight. Had dinner with awesome hosts Nitika & Sachin Mukesh 🙂

FYI: We have started noticing the difference in our car mileage. Normally with full tank (100 Ltrs) it would go roughly 480 miles but now with more than 200 kilos in our car (Winch@Front, Roof Rack with 2 Spare Tyres on top, 50cc Scooter etc.), it has come down to 350-400 😐

Moreover with so much additional weight, we could not see “Dhanno” doing higher speeds on Autobahn – What a shame !! Sniff Sniff