In search of sustenance Tuesday 23rd In Bruges

When one is staying in a town one knows quite well and one’s friends ask “do you know somewhere nice for lunch?”, it should not be difficult to form some sort of sensible response.

However, we are hopelessly indecisive when it comes to choosing a suitable eating establishment, usually relying entirely on the recommendations of others.  So after batting that question right back to the bowler, we were dismayed to learn that so were they.   We decided as a group that we’d walk the opposite side of town, perhaps just a little off the beaten path, and we’d eat at more-or-less the first place that took our collective fancies.

The first place looked well enough, and if just one of us had said “OK” we would have stopped, but we kept walking, passing a number of quite possibly very suitable places without hope or inspiration.  After some time we were in very real danger of missing lunch, so we phoned a friend who really knows about this sort of thing.

The first on her list was the first one we’d past, but it was twenty minutes behind us by then, so we decided to press on.  The next was just around the corner and it was closed on Tuesday, as was the next, and the one after that, and the one that was a further twenty minutes walk away, back to where we had been yesterday.   Fortunately in the tourist part of town, things don’t close ever, and by now at risk of hallucinating from lack of sustenance we stumbled blindly down a tiny lane towards some people seated at tiny two person tables.

“She has just finished” said the proprietor in response to our question, and in one single movement swept the poor lady’s table out from under her elbows and placed in deftly beside the one that was already between the four chairs we had occupied.  

Thankfully her sense of humour was as merveilleux as the food and service.

We were not similarly evicted, but left of our own accord after quite some time, congratulating ourselves on our new found skill in restaurant selection and feeling just a tiny bit more grown up than we had an hour or two earlier.