Brugge-man Bed and Breakfast

... other Churches.

I did have a couple of moments with brief drizzles, but overall I had some beautiful, sunny weather and I enjoyed a few hours of walking around Brugges (while eating a delicious waffle for part of it), before returning on the 25 minute train back to Ghent.

Which is where I am now, and I'll go eat at a friend of Johanna's house for dinner tonight. It is, by the way, definitely ...

... riding the bus with my huge backpack. Things always seem tougher and the rides longer when I have to haul it around with me. I won't miss it that much, I'm afraid. Anyways, it was acutally only about a 10 minute bus ride to the area where Johanna lives,and I found her apartment right away.

I greeted her and we had some really nice conversation, and she made some delicious ...

After a bit of a hard night, we were all up at about 9am to check out of our hotel and go for a quick wander around Brugge, another UNESCO World Heritage Site. Often described as the 'Venice of the North', there are quite a few canals in Brugge, but as we discovered, there's even more chocolate shops - they're everywhere!
We walked down a stretch of road, only about 1km long, and saw about 7-8 chocolate shops, including ...

... on the final 3 or so hours of our trip to Brugge near the coast. We were a little late arriving....we were supposed to meet up at 7:30pm for the awards ceremony at 8pm, but we didn't make it to the bar until 9:30 - oops! We received our medals and bottle of cheap wine for finishing, then went off to find some dinner.
As it was now past 10:30 we had to go for the first restaurant we could find, and we went to a place selling Argentinian food of all things! I'd never had ...

I saw the film "In Bruges" when it came out at the cinema a couple of years ago, and thought it looked like a beautiful city. So when Annabelle (the teacher in charge of me at school, and a good friend) suggested going for the day, Erin and I jumped at the chance.
The advantage of living so close to the Belgian border is that almost everywhere in Belgium is not much more than an hour away, and so we have no excuse not to see a lot of it!

We arrived in Bruges around 11.30 ...

... strawberry beer so we were a little apprehensive. I took the first sip. It was horrible! Not as horrible as the strawberry beer, but pretty horrible! It was the same bitter taste. We were determined to finish the bottle though seeing as we had paid so much for it, so we got by holding our noses each time we took a sip. Blech!

We thought we would leave it there and not push our luck so we went in search of a place for dinner. I had read about an Italian place that was ...

... my GPS and head for Brugge. Having to make a pit stop I get off at Maldegem. This is a cute town! I drive through it take a few pics. It's a little cloudy today, I am still hoping for some good photos, it’s early and so it could clear up.

I arrive at the opposite end of the town, than last time. So I see a lot ...

... the outskirts of Bruges dating from the 1700's. The Markt is the main square of Bruges and and spot where we sat and ate many a chocolate. One one side is the 13th Century Belfry which houses a carillon which plays regularly throughout to day (Conrad thought it sounded terribly off key, and he refused to take into account ...

... too!). They had the vial on display when we there and I got to see it up close (I think you can do this only once a year and we were lucky that we were there at that time). It didn't look like much, but at the end of the day it is still just dried up blood regardless of who it came from. Call me a cynic after all. I did feel awkward passing through in line amongst all these people who got on their knees and performed a few hail marys. After ...

... in the photo album for this entry are most of my workmates and a video walk-through of the Bauhaus from the front door, to the bar, through the kitchen and then down the back where the intimate couch setting is. It is a really cool bar and now you can get some sort of feeling for the way it went and how it looked. Although all that is changing as you read this: the whole hostel is undergoing a makeover because an English company bought it and it seems like they enjoy spending ...