Week in Review: Week 21
We had quite a busy week this week! We returned our car after having it for close to 5 months, explored Munich and participated in some Oktoberfest festivities, made our way by bus to Belgium, explored the gorgeous city of Bruges for a few days, took a bus to France to pick up our new car, and then made our way through the Chunnel to the UK. We are now in a beautiful English town called Thrussington, completing our first of five house/pet sits in the UK!
This week had a lot of highlights, so it was quite hard to narrow it down for our review.
Highlight of the week
Sharleen: Oktoberfest. This is something we had been looking forward to since we made the decision to travel to Europe. It was actually the first thing we booked! Our time at Oktoberfest was awesome. We went on opening day, got a seat at the Schützen Festzelt beer garden, and waited for the first beers to be poured. We lucked out and picked a tent that was quite popular with locals around our age. We made a bunch of new friends during our 12 hours at the tent! My only regret is that we were not wearing the traditional lederhosen and dirndl. Probably 95% of our tent/beer garden had the traditional clothing on, so it definitely felt weird without it!
Darrell: Beer in Bruges. It was awesome to be able to sit down and taste some beers at a small table along a narrow cobblestone street or at a table along the edge of a beautiful canal. Obviously there are a ton of different beers available everywhere, but for me, the depth and variety of flavours found in Belgian beers are something special. You aren’t getting a plain pint glass filled with a generic lager (there is definitely a time and place for that though!), you are getting a specially crafted piece of glassware that showcases the time and effort that went into making each different type of beer. I would even say that enjoying a Belgian beer is close to enjoying a nice glass of wine. I think in total, we tasted 20+ different brews while in Bruges and it was a great experience!
Least favourite part of the week
Sharleen. Lost my water bottle. Considering we have been on the road for almost 5 months, we have done really well with keeping all of our belongings. We’ve only lost two things, a pair of tweezers and now a water bottle (both things are mine actually, Darrell hasn’t lost anything). It was a nice Swell water bottle, and I’ve used it almost everyday! So losing it sucks. Especially because I have no idea where it went. It must have been on our bus to Belgium, so it’s unfortunately long gone now and I’ll have to get another one soon.
Darrell: The pandemonium at Oktoberfest. We headed down to the grounds super early first day, and I think that we were both quite surprized at how many people where already in line to get into the grounds first thing. Although the line to get in was busy, it wasn’t the end of the world, but once we actually got into the grounds it was pretty crazy! People were sprinting to get to the various beer tents. There are a limited amount of tables that aren’t reserved in each tent, with the rest being first come, first serve. We were able to get into one of the tent really early, but trying to find an open table, when we can’t read the signs or speak the language was quite stressful and ended up being unsuccessful. So after leaving that tent we made it into another tent, where it was a very similar frenzy. We were able to find a table outside on the patio of the second tent and we planted ourselves there for the rest of the day. I’m not sure I have been involved with something like this with that much chaos, and it was definitely overwhelming! If you aren’t comfortable with such craziness, I would suggest not going for the first day and maybe hit the grounds on one of the weekday afternoons.
Favourite city/town/village visited
Sharleen and Darrell: Bruges. We loved this city! It may even be our favourite so far on the trip. It’s absolutely stunning - the architecture of the houses, the cobblestone streets, the canals, the huge gothic towers and churches, really every part of it. In older European cities our favourite parts are the old city squares that have cute colourful buildings with so much charm. Usually it’s only one square, or a few streets, but in Bruges, it is the whole place! We spent two days getting lost in the streets and just walking all over. For us, it was the quintessential European town, and exactly what we hoped to find while travelling Europe. We loved the vibe of the city. It was very peaceful, calm, romantic, friendly, and full of charm. Not to mention full of chocolatiers, wafels houses and shops, and bars offering delicious Belgian beer. We also had a great Airbnb, and the hosts took us on an evening tour to show us some of the lesser known areas and explain some of the unique history found in Bruges. It was really great.
The only negative thing we found was that it was quite expensive compared to other cities, especially the meals. On average, an entree cost between $25-40 Canadian (for lunch and dinner), which was more in line with what we experienced in Scandinavia.
Favourite meal of the week
Sharleen: Belgian Waffle from Lizzie’s Wafels. Waffles are quite a big deal in Bruges. There are stands for the all over town, and it seems like every other restaurant has them on their menu. When looking up “the” place to get waffles, we found Lizzie’s Wafels. The only things on the menu are waffles, and you can chose a few toppings for an extra cost. We both got warm cherries, and Darrell also added whipped cream. It was AMAZING! After trying our waffles we totally understood what all the hype was about. First of all, these waffles were enormous. We easily could have shared, but instead we each got our own and left feeling so satisfied and completely full. Sharleen snagged a few spoonfuls of Darrell’s whipped cream, because it was such a solid combination. It definitely went so perfectly with the cherries and waffles. Since the waffles come with icing sugar, we didn’t want to get anything too sweet as a topping. The cherries were pretty tart and sour, so we thought it complimented the waffle so well.
Darrell: Pizza at Osteria Del Parco in Poing. We were staying just outside of Munich in the small town of Poing. Our Airbnb hosts had recommended a few different places to get a coffee, bite to eat, or to eat dinner and Osteria Del Parco was one of those places. It is a small Italian place that serves a bunch of different pasta and pizza options. I had a pizza with hot peppers, spicy Italian salami, and really tasty chilli oil. I almost didn’t even take a picture of it because I thought that there was no way that a pizza was going to be my favourite meal in Germany and Belgium. But, every once and a while you get lucky and order something that hits all of your cravings in one go, and this did just that. It was cheesy and spicy, and that checked all the boxes with each bite.
We are now in the UK and making our way to Scotland where we will be for two months! It will be the country we are spending the most amount of time in on our trip. We’ve been lucky to secure a few house sits, so we have some fun experiences coming up over the next few weeks. We get to Glasgow in a few days and are looking forward to explore our first major UK city. Until then, we are spending a few days in the English countryside, and can’t wait to have a proper English tea!
