Well we took the longest train ride of my life, 16 hours, but we finally made it to Brugges, Belgium.
First of all we stayed at a hostel called the Snuffle Spot, which I found amusing. Ahhh, but the town here is beautiful. All the houses are quaint with their old brick walls and fences. We saw one of the cathedrals which contained amazing paintings and wall hangings. Then Katie and I walked along the canal to one of the "romantic" spots mentioned on this super detailed map we got from the hostel. There we had our usual feast of bread and cheese. We eve got to watch a duck that acted like it was on speed because it kept dive bombing the other ducks and would not stop quacking. From there we went to this super tasty waffel shop and I was able to have my first waffel in over 6 months.
Did you know they have blonde beer here? Weird. They have so many variations compared to the states. I mean they even have fruit flavored beers here. We went to this bar that was called The Frog, but the actual name was in Flemmish, but this is what it translated to. Here we were able to listen to some live music, which was good because I have been going almost 3 weeks by this time with no music, kind of drives me crazy. Anyway we listened to one of the men speak to the bartender and listening to him speak Flemmish sounded like we were listening to a bunch of drunk people.
On the 30th we left for Brussels where one of the first sites we visited was Saint Michaels Cathedral. from there we visited the Grand Market, and then one of my favorites The Mannekin Pis. This statue is of a little boy peeing and the legend goes that a little boy became separated from his father for two/three days and when the dad finally found him the little boy was caught peeing. Oh later that day we found the sister statue that shws a little girl peeing. Those statues are quite popular for how small they are. Oh and right across from the sister statue Katie and I found this amazing pub. They had 2004 flavors of beer and were in the Guinness Book of World Records for having that many. There were so many choices that I finally settled on a banana beer because I had never heard about it before. Turns out that the beer was amazing, one of my favorite drinks, and the cool part was that it was served in this super sweet bowl, which I took : ) Hey at least now I will have a cool bowl to eat cereal out of back at the flat. Katie had a strawberry beer, which was also yummy but no cool bowl to go along with it. Katie really wanted one of the bowls so we came back later that night and this time she got the banana beer and I tired a chocolate beer, mom that one was in your honour : )
The next morning Katie and I went to the local flea market. Gram, you would have loved this place because they had a million different kinds of tea sets. Afterwards we headed in the direction, at least we thought we were, of the EU Parliment building. We come upon this giant building that we thought was the EU and then thought it was weird how they had gurads outside of the building. Turns out we went in the wrong direction and ended up at the Royal Palace, no wonder the pqrk across the street looked so familar we had just been to that park the day before. Well we finally made it to the EU building and still had time to spare before the tour. Its cool to say that I have been to the EU Parliment building but the tour was super boring. It had said that on our map but we thought the tour couldnt be that bad. Everything that was said in the tour Katie and I had already read in the info center so it was all kind of a repeat. Oh well.
Well only a about 10 days left of break and we have so much to do. Off to Paris tomorrow!!!
Belgium's Flag
Map of Belgium