Brugge: beer, bars,and buckets of chocolately rain

First off, let me apologize for the last hasty post. I was typing with a timer literally ticking down my time above my text. I kinda just barfed facts and thoughts while trying to be witty, and I'm pretty sure I failed on all accounts.

Well, we are currently in Brugge, Belgium. From what I've seen, Brugge is west flemish (the random and endless strange dialect spoken here) for rain and old churches. The town is only a half hour walk from one end to the other, and its an endless maze of west flemish street names. But I digress, first a little about brugge...

It is the best preserved mideval city in Eurppe. There are computer shops in four hundred year old buildings.
It is ridiculously expensive. Even the bruggians (bruggers? bruggites? brugs?) bitch about it.
It is the epicenter of belgian chocolate and beer and other finery. You can literally buy over five hundred kinds of beer in a single bar. Most of them on tap.

So, we've been here for a couple days and are planning to leave tomorrow. We did pretty much everything to do in Paris the first day we were there. The second day we went to sacre coeur, almost got in a fight with a "souvenier selling" pickpocket that seemed much more interested in Juliet than James and I (imagine that, more attracted to a gorgeous brunette french speaking canadian girl than two smelly american dudes...) and got hopelessly lost.

In Brugge, there is a town hall building that is amazing. It is dripping with High Gothic architecture, and more gold and family shields than I have ever seen on a building before. Attached to it is a tiny cathedral that is obviously Romanesque, but had some strange windows and faces carved in the walls. I've never seen anything like it and it definitely doesn't fit any style I or James know. Cheryl, help!
There are also two town squares full of wretchedly overpriced shops and restaurants that sell all manor of chocolates and pasteries and of course, beer. (for example, some of the best beer here is brewed by monks. and it'll run you 4.5 euros a glass) I'd love to bring everyone lots of chocolate and stuff, but I'd rather eat as much of it as possible myself :)
It has rained both days we have been here. Actually, let me rephrase that, it has poured for both days we have been here. In Belgium, it gives you about ten minutes of warning rain, and then just breaks loose. It only comes a couple hours at a time though, so at least the entire day isn't trashed.

Today's fun visual for the people that know us best:
Being full of chocolate and such, James and I both desperately needed a workout. After asking directions from our friendly bartender/hostel employee/resident badass, we walked to continental fitness.
It is a gym that looks like it was built in an old barn, although the inside is quite nice. It had three rooms on two levels and quite a bit of good equipment By good, I mean a step above what was in the weight room in our middle school. It felt very old school, but was a good experience and we got a good workout.
(for the record, europeans have a strange obsession with early nineties music and eighties rock ballads, even while they lift weights, i.e. Meatloaf's paradise by the dashboard light and some Hootie and the Blowfish..)

Well, I have almost run out the battery on the computer I borrowed from a lovely australian woman named Andrea, so I must go. I'll leave you with a visual though.
I'm sitting in a dark back corner of a Belgian bar. It is fairly warm, with dark wood, barely functioning lights, and leather chairs so old Noah saw that animals that used to wear it. There are twenty people speaking thrity languages at once, and they are all enjoying a pint of something you can't get anywhere else, even if you tried. It is raining like the apocolypse outside. The candle holders have held flames for so many conversations, pounds of wax have dripped down and covered the handles almost completely. You can see the knife marks where the bartenders have cut it away so that they can move the holder without coloring their hands red. I just caught a wiff of chocolate, cigarette smoke, and cherry beer all at the same time. The table I'm sitting at was obviously hand built and looks older than the brick and wood plank ceiling over me.
Life is good.