Floreal Blankenberge

... window on the way, listening to my ipod looking out the window. By the time I got out of the train at Brugges, and walked along countless other tourists (insane, and this is WINTER), the sun had peeked out a bit.

By the time I was walking into the main historical center, I had beautiful weather. Nice rays of sunshine giving me some beautiful lighting for pictures and just admiring the beauty of ...

... 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 ...

... at the end.
We also toured the local De Halv Maans brewery, which offered good views at the top and pretty good beer. And we found the newest idea in take out--fast food pasta! They cook fresh pasta right in front of you, add a sauce, put it in a cup and give you a fork, for 3 Euro. We think it would take off at home.
Oh, we haven't mentioned chocolate yet. Brugge also has a chocolate museum which ...

... the market and the shops and then went on a boat ride which was fantastic, after which we went to a tea-room which claimed to have the best hot chocolate in town, and it was really good! It was incredibly sickly though and gave both Erin and I a headache for the ride home!

Altogether a really fun day out in Bruges, truffles bought, Belgian food eaten and Belgian alcohol drunk, and Belgian chocolate drunk! This is another place where we will definitely be returning!!

... has been preserved. After our nice walk through there we walked to the more modern area of the town and discovered a separate square with the most unusual statues in a fountain. It seemed to greatly contrast the medieval feel of the city and was almost shocking. We enjoyed them greatly though and took some pictures with the ducky of course!

After spending some time sitting at the steps in the market square we made our way up ...

... English detective show or something. We had a great night out and ran back to the hostel in the rain.
We walked all around the town and saw little parks and local areas to the north of the town where people actually live. Around town there are heaps of chocolate shops and even a TinTin shop! The clothing stores are all fancy and there are mouth-watering pink-decorated candy stores.
Our visit to Ghent was nice too. It is ...

... is another cute little bar. So after we ate we went across the street and had a couple beers. We also saw our tour guide from earlier that day there.

The next day it was rainy but we walked around the city anyway. It was just too cute to not explore. We walked to the edge of town and saw the dutch windmills then walked back into town for some chocolate and went on a shopping ...

... the size of a post office mail box and that mangled umbrellas do not fit through the hole easily. Ah well, I will soon buy a new, hopefully more reliable umbrella to leave for Carolina, but I think it's these unlucky little incidents that are causing me so much money here in Europe. Hopefully things will start going a little more smoothly from here on out. I have come to terms with my stolen bicycle and my shredded ...

... invited a lone traveler down to have a few beers with us, her name was Naomi and she was from Mexico City.  She was very nice and it was interesting talking to her.  It turned out she was a chemist, who worked in a lab.  She told us that after working full time for three years she was only allowed to have 10 days holidays including the weekends!  In her first year she was only allowed to have 3 days!  How much does that suck, she also told us how ...

... excited to work at them, however, I was really just upset about the whole thing and couldn't get into it. I kept comparing each of them to what I was supposed to be doing and being disappointed. Additionally, since the intern coordinator had to set them up last minute, there was a lot of confusion during them and I don't think that I really had an equal opportunity. I will spare you guys all the details of the interview experience, but overall I was just ...