Hotel Atlanta Knokke-Heist

... city. Awesome architecture and canals winding around the city, as I took tons of pictures as always and just enjoyed the city.

Apparently Brugges had a movie made recently with it as a location; I'll have to check it out sometime. The main "art" piece I saw was a Madonna with Child from -the- Michaelangelo from Italy. It was quit nice, as were the countless other paintings and sculptures I saw in that ...

Today I said goodbye to rainy, rainy Bruxelles, and took the half hour train (8 euros) to Gent/Ghent, where I met up with my first host ever, Johanna. She was the first couchsurfer to welcome me into her home back in 2007, after I had finished my year in South Korea, in Beijing.

- Before going to Ghent, I actually made a stop in the Musical Instruments Museum in Bruxelles ...

Today was a many miles day - around 500 in fact, or about 800km! We all met up in a carpark on the outskirts of Macon, then travelled in convoy north. As we were travelling such a long way today, we all decided to use the motorways, as despite being toll roads and meaning we'd see a bit less scenery, it was well worth it as we'd get to stop for longer on the way and get there earlier. The tolls were quite expensive compared to what I'm used to (it cost us about 21 Euros/NZ$42 for the ...

... 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!!

We made our way from Gouda to Brugge. Brugge is a beautiful town that holds a lot of its older architecture and feel. With its canals and its medieval buildings it is a great town to spend the day exploring and taking pictures. Once again a drizzly day we lucked out and managed to get a few hours of sunshine to take out our cameras.

Our campsite was about 15 minutes out of town so we took a bus that took us directly to the city ...

(Steve)
Belgium was one of those places that wasn't high on our list of things to do but ended upbeing one of our favourites. Staying in Bruges rather than Brussels was probably the reasonbut we also managed to find an assortment of hidden treasures thanks to a helpful local mapmade by locals. Our hostel was called snuffel - the best one in town if you ask. They had a bar that offered 25 different Belgian beers and was a cosy ...

... on the way there, we had to ride to Vlessingin to get to the shore. We stopped and took a bunch of pictures and I dropped my camera on the rocks and I thought it broke which would have been disastrous, but no worries! It was fine after I took the battery out. We stopped to eat at this little shabby looking restaurant and that when it started to pour rain. It got freezing cold ...

... went through the Grande Place one last time and wrote some postcards and then bid farewell to the beautiful city and boarded a train to Bruges ... (By Bri) We got into Bruges by train in the afternoon and took a tram to the Snuffel Hostel. We had to ask a lady cycling by (everyone here in Belgium bikes everywhere, on cell phones, eating ice cream, with no hands, with one foot...) where Ezelstraat is. Bruges is in the part of Belgium called Flanders so everyone there speaks ...

... food. Frites with a splodge of mayo, waffles of the Belgian variety (no kidding), and chocolates. The only letdown was the mussels, we ordered mussels at a pretty upmarket restaurant and recieved the most pathetic little mussels I have ever seen. A fraction of the size of the ones at home and chewy. We finished our time in Bruges feeling bloated and hungover, a sure sign of time well spent. Only problem was we had memory gaps about how we managed to blow 3 times our budget here, oops!