Advertisement
Published: July 13th 2007
As I headed along the Dutch coastline towards the highly militarised border with Belgium, my days in the Netherlands had come to an end. I left the Netherlands to it as I zoooooooooooooomed into the picturesque city of Brugge in northwest Flemish country to meet up with an 1pm SHARP/ON THE DOT appointment with Jean Genie- sorry in-joke there with that one. On the exciting journey in to the city, one of my sports shoes had the decency to fall out of my bag to find its place somewhere on the road a few ks back. Luckily a Flemish family had notified me of my loss, otherwise that would have been a goner. My rubbish bag that I'd got off my grandfather, 250ks back in Drachten had certainly seen better days, things were actually falling out all the time. After that major drama, we met up at some square and had a good old time in Brugge. The city is commonly referred to as a museum; everything seemed to be designed for tourists and there were nothing but tourists. Actually, I was surprised to see no entrance fee into the city and no glass cabinets around its buildings. It's pretty
amazing though, we had a good looked around at all the old architecture- dating back to 1100 or so, and we made a boat tour and did the usual eating and drinking thing.
Later in the afternoon, I headed into the next city along the way: Ghent. I had found a place to stay via the previous stay-over and was pleased to be staying in a tent on someone's front lawn in a semi-rural area near the city. It was a bit of a mission finding the place but I got there eventually and had a great time with great food with great hospitality- apparently the Belgians are known for their wonderful hospitality, so no such complaints. The next morning I headed into Ghent, a less touristy alternative to that other place. I had a good look around and climbed the church and then left. It was a bit of a quick 2hr tour as I'd arranged accommodation in Antwerpen that same night. Sunny Ghent soon turned into rainy industrial Ghent as I headed along the river- whatever it was called- as I tried to make my way to Antwerpen. I took shelter, this time in a bike shed
that had a great view over one of Flander's great factories, but things soon cleared up a bit. I decided to take a detour into rural Belgium and check out some of the real rural towns of the country. Belgium's quite a bit different to the Netherlands though, which I was a bit surprised by. The quality of the roads are the biggest difference. And with poor roads come poor cycle lanes and then with poor cycle lanes come poor cycle lane directions. I would have asked about 30 people the way to Antwerpen, and even they made errors, so after some time and getting lost a number of times in the maze of rural land Belgium, I got there.
Antwerpen was nice enough, I had yet another great couchsurf experience and also went out for a bit. I also managed to sell my bike to one of my hosts which worked out pretty darn excellent. I admit that I did have a bit of a cry though as it was my intention to ride into Brussels so clearly fell short. My final Belgie destination was good old Eurocratic Brussels. I first met up with Jean Genie again- this
time in her so-called le dungeon, the flat's basement- below street level, in one of Brussel's lovely inner-city's grey concrete styled areas. In Brussels I did the usual Grand Palace, national museum and also the not so usual European and National Parliaments. I also met up with some other friends, including randomly running into someone who I'd met in NZ and had a good time.
So that was that, roughly a week in Belgium- very much enjoyed its chocolates, beer, and frits but no more bike riding. I am now down the road in some place apparently called Paris.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.31s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 13; qc: 65; dbt: 0.0633s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Brititi
non-member comment
Bumped into Mr Portugal did you?
Ha ha, and that beard is getting very long! All you need now is a horse and cart, and a black hat!