Trying and failing to resist temptation
I am supposed to be on a diet to undo the damage sustained after fifteen months of packing away any kind of British comfort food set before me. However, I am currently in Brugge, smack dab in the land of Belgian fries, Belgian chocolate, and Belgian waffles. The city of Brugge has both a chocolate museum and a potato museum–if there’s a waffle museum, we haven’t found it yet. Within the 1.66 square miles of the canal-ringed old city center, there are more than 40 dedicated chocolate shops, sometimes three or four in a row on the same side of an ancient cobblestone street. Thankfully, waffle shops and fry carts aren’t quite as numerous, though they definitely aren’t hard to find. It’s too bad they were not distributing willpower when we entered the city, because rolling around an intravenous drip of the stuff would have been about the only way to save my diet from the warm waffle with ice cream and dark Belgian chocolate sauce I had late this afternoon, right before my dinner of Flemish beef stew with Belgian fries (the waffle shop closes at 6:00 p.m., so we couldn’t risk eating dinner first then coming back for dessert). One thing I know for sure: I would have regretted leaving Belgium without experiencing its famous cuisine far more than I’m going to regret the extra miles and extra sit-ups the indulgence will cost me in the gym next week.
Things I See and Know 