Day 1: More cathedral, more chocolate

This week we took a 3-day trip to Belgium! First stop, Amiens (France), to visit the incredible Notre Dame d'Amiens cathedral, home of the head of John the Baptist, complete with silver platter.


It's even taller than Notre Dame de Paris.
Six of the apostles. I can now tell most of them apart in paintings, sculpture, stained glass, etc.


Not a very good picture, but this was my favorite stained glass. Most of the glass actually wasn't colored.
Looking down the nave.
A much better picture of the stained glass, taken by someone else. Thank you!
When the sun came out of the clouds, we saw this reflection on the pillars behind the windows.
Us inside the church...
No, I didn't take these either. Cool, huh?
Diane under another amazingly high organ.
The whole group.
Next stop, Bruges, aka Disneyland Belgium. It's so cute! This is the town hall (so I hear) in the main square. Could double as Cinderella's castle, right?

A big tower in the marketplace.
I thought it was funny that this (in Dutch)
and this (in French) were right next to each other. I didn't know until I looked at Wikipedia that Bruges is the capital of West Flanders. There you go.

We went to a chocolate museum that was not nearly as cool as the Lindt place in Cologne, but still fun (not to mention the people working there didn't seem too thrilled about 25 people coming in an hour before closing time). Reason #1 right here. Is that a gross visual or what?
Reason #2: we were too late to see a demo from this guy, and there was no mini-factory a la Willy Wonka.
But speaking of Johnny Depp, there were lots of amazing chocolate sculptures and figures, including Jack Sparrow and Davey Jones...
And several of these ladies.
And this huge egg made of...you guessed it, solid chocolate...with a picture of their "chocolate fairy." Forget a fairy godmother, I could use a chocolate fairy.
Apparently this was the Spaniards' secret recipe back in the day. Secret's out.
We finished the day with real Belgian waffles and fries (yes, they were created in Belgium). Mmm! Actually, I have to say I prefer American waffles, although it was delicious. (Shout-out to Doris!) We felt guilty speaking English all the time, but surprisingly, we saw almost no French and heard none at all. Also saw lots of adorable shops while trying to find our way to the hotel...chocolate and lace seemed to dominate. Unfortunately, they were closed, but the lace and the chocolate were both beautiful!