Hotel De Hofkamers Ostende

... English detective show or something. We had a great night out and ran back to the hostel in the rain.<br>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.<br>Our visit to Ghent was nice too. It is ...

... here. "A church!" you say. I know I know you would think that i got my fill of churches in Italy and Spain however I have not been to the church that boasts to be the proud owners of a vile of Christ's actual blood! Yep you read correctly, they claim that they house the DNA and blood of Christ. Now, I'm no doctor, I gave that dream up a while ago, but I'm pretty sure that 2000 year old blood would have evaporated by now. But ...

... around a bit more and got lunch at a cheap Italian restaurant. We were cold and freezing and cold and sick of sightseeing, so we went back to the hostel for an afternoon nap &#8211; we really miss siestas! Our evening was pretty quiet too &#8211; Bruges isn&#8217;t exactly a party capital.<br><br>Day trip to Brussels! We caught the train to Brussels, and after about 1 hour we had walked around the touristy bit, seen the main square and the statue of the little boy ...

... each other for territory, then the ducks and the swans fight each other! No one seems to know who is fighting who! They all kept us very amused for another hour with their actions and all the funny noises they made. <br><br>It was time to take the bikes back after this as they had to be back by 7pm, bit of a shame really ass it was quite relaxing just sitting and watching and chatting.<br><br>We had dinner at the same place as we did the first night, though we were careful to ...

... places. So went to a museum, saw a palace where the king and queen never lived, got lost a little trying to get back and went looking for something to eat. Since I blew the wad on breakfast I thought I&#8217;d eat cheap so I went to Quick, the Euro equivalent of McDonalds. Got a &#8220;Big Bacon&#8221;(not that big), a coke, some Cheesy Balls and a coffee for less than 10 Euro. Then headed back to the hotel and crashed so I could get a ...

... waffles really were great), and went to De Halve Mann, the only brewery still working in Bruges. After a tour of the brewery, which led me to reminisce about me being Dad&#8217;s underage basement-beer-brewing apprentice, we were entitled to a free sample of the blond beer brewed on-site.<br><br>After our tasty beverage, we continued our tour of Bruges. There are a ridiculous amount of lace and chocolate shops around, and we were lucky enough to ...

... 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.<br><br>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 ...

... that lay right outside the train station. We spent a considerable amount of time walking along the docks, beach and promenade, then decided to look for our first proper food of the holiday. John managed a hotdog, Tom a Cornish pasty that had been getting increasingly crushed in his bag since leaving England . Trying to fit in with the locals, but actually being really obvious tourists, Lyndsey and I opted for the Belgian Waffle ( Brussels version, that ...

... façades that they are. No matter though, as it's a hell of a view along the beach although it apparently gets crowded in the summer. The only problem with Belgian weather though is that its not consistent. So when you book far in advance to score a nice sea-side view in a ritzy hotel for you and your Belgian family/friends etc, you have no idea if it'll be 58° and rainy, or 88° and sunny. hmmmmmm. Might as well play it safe and fly to Morocco to help clean shrimp.

... goods from one place to another and so these canals really are just for looks. I was reading an information booklet about the city and before there was street lighting (hundreds of years ago) it was common for people to come out of the pubs late at night and stumble into the canals and drown. Something that is really cool about the streets is that they have all be paved indivually with stones. Makes you feel like you are in the medieval era - what is intended here of course! I saw a pub ...