Blogs from West Flanders, Belgium, Europe - page 25

Today is the last day to use our eurrail pass. Though it was quite cloudy and chilly we made plans with the Clasens to meet at the train station in Oostende. We biked to the Leuven train station and managed to catch the 9:35 train (only because it was 15 minutes late otherwise we would have missed it). The train was packed but it was an easy 1.5 hour trip and the kids were all good; they must be getting used to it. We arrived shortly before Zoe and Christian and so we got a cup of coffee. Once together we walked along the street to the beach. Though the town isn’t very pretty but the beach was fairly empty (probably due to the weather) and the kids had so much fun running around and playing ... read more

Hello, Backpacks almost organised, tickets are available, garden cleaned up, ready to take off... read more

lots of trains today, and i mean lots. checked out of the snuffel (sob) at 10am, after a brilliant few days there. if anybody is staying in brugges anytime soon, i really cannot recommend it enough, its a brilliant place. the staff are all brilliant, even if i did manage to kinda insult one of them. a girl from yorkshire strangley enough, complimented me on my orange exploding dog shirt, and then said 'this is where you say nice shirt to me', to which i replied, for some stupid reason, 'yeah, but...'. good work bills, good work. but yes, the staff are all brilliant, the hostel itself is great, even if the showers are a bit mad. you have to hold down a chain for the water to flow. its a bit mad in all honesty. ... read more

Geo: 51.1693, 3.34704Didn't sleep well again - must be depression over going home soon! So to make up for it, I of course had to stuff myself at breakfast. Some decent stuff - spicy ham (a little fatty) and lots of OJ. They had some crappy fruitcake - but with a little Nutella it actually tasted pretty good! Off for a walk - there are four windmills along a canal on the edge of the historic zone. It's a funny thing - running alongside the windmills is a freeway. The juxtaposition of modern and traditional elements ... it's a striking snapshot of time. A reminder of how much the world has, and will continue to change. Some things may remain constant but everything around it will always be in a state of flux. It's a unique ... read more

Well as you may or may not remember we were heading on a bike trip from the Belgium coast to France and down the Seine into Paris. But alas as the title of this entry implies this endeavor was not as successful as we had hoped… We began our (brief) journey at the Leuven train station where we first realized that things might not go as smoothly as we had hoped. We purchased tickets for our bikes and ourselves to take to train to Oostende on the Belgium coast where we would begin our ride. We were led to believe that boarding the train with our bikes would be a simple task - perhaps for others it is but nothing is simple in the realm of Carrie and Kyle. After one missed train (due to the ... read more