Hotel Figaro Knokke-Heist

... drizzling quite a bit here in Gent, but that's ok...

Tomorrow I'll try and brave the weather (here's hoping for some more sunshine) around Gent. My last full day in Belgium, since on Monday I take a train out to Dusseldorf, to spend my last night in Germany and Europe with my first hosts. Then, I leave around noon from the Dusseldorf airport to Fort Myers, back in the states. Last 3 days....

... is the largest collection of musical instruments in the world, and for only 4 euro (with a student card discount), I spent a good couple of hours visiting the hundreds and hundreds of musical instruments, which automatically play 2 or 3 short pieces through your wireless headphones as you walk around the different exhibits. -

It was "fun" (quote marks intended for ...

... driving) but the motorways were so good - 3 lanes each way, hardly any traffic at all, and really smooth. The motorways in France have a speed limit of 130kph in the dry, and 110kph in the wet, so either way they were faster and more direct than the meandering country roads with a 90kph limit.

Part of the way along, we came across team Les Pompiers, and they drove past us waving our aerial at us! We soon caught up and received it back though...at about 130kph!

We stopped ...

... the best way to learn about the beer produced in all of the neighboring provinces. The staff was so helpful when looking through the twenty page menu, they have seriously tried all 200 beers. The Belgian beer is also very strong, so after a couple of drink we decided it was time to try some of the local food.
There are two french fry carts sitting in the town square, the competition is steep between ...

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 ...

... 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 ...

... chocolate, and fries. French Fries actually originated in Belgium, and two stalls sellthem in the middle of Bruges outside the belfry tower in the same location they have been selling them for the last century. Apparently there is a long running rivalry between the two and locals often argue who sells the best fries - we couldn't really tell the difference.
From Bruges we went on two day trips to Ghent and Brussels, and poked ...

Today Jessica, Jake, Alli, and I went for what started out as a walk around town and what ended up as a tour of the outskirts of Middelburg. We walked through this great park Jessica found and sat on the benches for a while. We had lunch at this cute little snack shop by the park. Jake is always the one to try the weird foods, but he got this deepfried hotdogish thing, it was pretty tastey but he didn't know what it ...

... a rest (why aren't bike seats more comfy) and rode the last 30mins home. That arvo i am sad to say we realised we had gotten quite burnt, as we were covered up it was only on our hands and our faces.  I look really quite ridiculous at the moment as i have a very noticable sunglasses mark, not very becoming. After heading out to have a few more beers in one of the lovely squares we grabbed some cheap pasta and headed back to the hostel.  That night ...

... this morning and wandered around Luxembourg which is about the size of a postage stamp. We saw the entire town in about an hour and a half. So . . . we decided ti hop on a train to Brugge. We arrived this afternoon and found our hostel on the first try, shocking. We had a nice walk and had dinner at De Hobbit, the best cuisine in middle earth. Libby ...