BRUGGE A CITY FULL OF MUSEUMS

We decided to leave the best to last! With so many churches and museums, of every possible interest, we decided on the most appropriate for us. What else but the museum of chocolate and Friet, yep, you read it right! Here in Brugge is possibly the world's only museum dedicated to the humble potato and its fried form.

The temple of 'friets'

Historic fryers

There are so many ways to spell "fries", frite, fritte, fritten and friet, but they are all the same thing! Of course, in Belgium they believe they were "invented" here and therefore should NOT be called "French Fries". Seriously though it was quite informative, but despite an incentive to buy some at the end of the tour, we resisted! There are only so many fries you can eat, believe it or not.

The next stop was the museum of chocolate - would you believe a discount was offered if you were brave enough to visit both museums!

Anne would not be photographed outside either museum!

For those who want to know the difference

Chocolate was drunk initially by the aristocracy, the jugs had a hole in the top through which a 'frother' devise was inserted and twisted to produce a frothy top. It wasn't 'till later that they discovered how to 'temper' chocolate that they could make the chocolate hard and produce the myriad of forms we now enjoy.

And whilst not exactly being a 'museum' we discovered a temple of a different sort:

We didn't count them.

What more proof do you need?

Interesting that they make glasses specifically for certain types of beer, to hold in the aroma. They have beer that is 11.3%! They say anything under 6% is a soft drink! Quite a cultural morning really, we feel so much wiser about the things we are eating and drinking too much of.