Advertisement
Published: April 26th 2009
This past thursday we had a boat cruise on the Mosel River. Mostly all the students went and we got all dressed up. It included dinner and dancing, so it was a fun way to end off the year. Our dean is retiring, and that night it was his birthday also, so he was presented with a special gift. Born in the U.S.A. played and everyone was singing it...I think people are definitely getting ready to come home!
On Friday morning I left for Brugge, Belgium with two of my friends, Katie and Emily. After we checked in we walked around and saw the market square, which is very medieval and beautiful. We climbed 366 steps to the top of a bell tower and saw a great view of the city. We also went into the Holy Blood Chapel, but the vile of Jesus' blood was behind some relic. We took a canal boat tour and enjoyed the beautiful weather and blooming trees and flowers. I couldn't really hear the tour guide, but I liked just looking around and seeing Brugge. We ate at a restaurant in the market square. I decided to be adventurous and try Flemish rabbit. It actually
wasn't too bad, it tasted like lamb to me. After dinner we went to a bar called Vlissinghe, which has been open since 1515. My mom went there and liked it, so we wanted to go too. It was out of the tourist section of town, which was nice. It was very low key and there weren't many people there for most of the time that we were there. They had board games to play, so we relaxed and enjoyed some cherry beer. The next morning we went to the Church of Our Lady, which has a Michaelangelo sculpture, Madonna and Child, in it (one of the few outside of Italy). A little later we returned to see the Hold Blood vile, because at 11:30 each day they get it out for people to see it. A lady (which was strange that it wasn't a man) put it on a pillow on an alter. We lined up to go up and lay our hand on the vile and say a short prayer if we wanted. I wanted to stand there for a while to get a good look at it, but there were people waiting so I couldn't stare for
too long. It seems to me that theres more than 1 or 2 drops of blood and sweat in there and it looked like it was soaked up by a sponge or something. It was really difficult to decifer what was what and I obviously couldn't get a picture either. It looked mostly likie dried blood, though, and the two ends of the vile were gold with detailed decorations.
After seeing the vile we walked to the train station and took a train to Brussels. There we walked to Manneken Pis. It was really crowded because he was getting another outfit, which we think was a street cleaners outfit (maybe because of Earth day). We were frustrated with the amount of people, so we took our pictures and left that area. We went and found the same chocolate store that I went to with my mom called Leonidas. We all got a little bit of chocolate, and then found a waffle place and enjoyed Belgian waffles in the Grand Place area. On the train ride home Emily and I had two strange flavors of beer that we wanted to try. I had chocolate and she had banana. It was so
strange...it tasted like chocolate at first, then beer, and then a combination of the two. It was good to try, but hard to drink a lot of.
We only stayed one night because we have finals this week and had to come back to study (which is way this entry isn't that long). I'll probably give one last update on some last things I'm playing on doing, but I can't guarantee it in case I get too busy. I return Friday evening and I cannot wait!!! At this point I just want to be back, but I'm trying to appreciate the last few days because I know I'm going to miss it a lot!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.077s; Tpl: 0.018s; cc: 6; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0464s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
