Hotel Focus Kortrijk

Hé hé !

L'Amérique latine, nous voici nous voilà très très bientôt !!!
Plus que quelques heures avant le décollage...
L'excitation et l'appréhension sont 2 émotions qui se battent en duel en ce moment.

Le départ est prévu à 20h ce lundi 7 décembre de Paris CDG et l'atterrisage le mardi 8 décembre à Buenos Aires.
Nous en avons rêvé et ce projet va enfin devenir réalité.

Nous partons tout équipés : les 2 v ...

... 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 ...

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 ...

... the amazing Louvre, with the Mona Lisa and thousands of other pieces of art, as well as the Chateau de Versailles. Anyways, Paris was amazing, and now I'll be in Lille for a couple of days..

My European trip is coming to an end in about 2 weeks or so, when I leave from Dusseldorf on the 8th of December to Fort Myers Florida. But before that I still have a bit of Netherlands and Belgium to enjoy..

... soldier'. Again, it was pretty sobering, seeing all these graves.

We managed to all get completely soaked today, and it was freezing cold and windy as well, so it wasn't particularly comfortable. After that, it was back to Calais, stopping at one more of the massive French hypermarkets for a few souvenir pieces of food, then back onto the ferry back to Dover.

So, that was the Crumball Rally over! We did ...

... attention to detail.

Back on the road, we headed further north and crossed over the border in Luxembourg. We stopped briefly at some motorway services, but as we were running short for time we didn't get the chance to stop in Luxembourg city. Going through one village we did see a pretty cool house on top of an outcrop of rocks, which looked great all lit up, but it was hard to get a shot which did it justice.

After crossing over into Belgium we stopped for gas, then ...

... went for a wander around the Beguinage and the little streets of the city before stopping for lunch in a restaurant on the main square, which was really nice and served local traditional food which was really great.

We wanted to go up the clock-tower but the queue was far too long and we decided that we could go back another day during the week when there weren't so many tourists!

The Christmas market had just started in Bruges so we spent quite a while wandering ...

... located just across the street from our hotel. We stayed at the Novotel right off Grand Place, right in the center of the city. It was a great location and to tell you the truth after spending almost 2 months in someone else's home, it was really nice to be in a hotel...oh the luxury of anonymity! When we had made our way from frite stand to waffle stand and covered most of Brussels, we decided to tackle the culinary delights of Ghent and maybe fit in a cultural ...

... its beaches. I expected it to be very hot since Bruges was very warm, but I brought a hoodie anyway. It's a good thing because it was very windy and cool in certain areas. I grabbed a ****** hot dog bun and sat at the church square for a moment. Then I walked along the seaside promenade and had a snack. Ostend is definitely not the nicest seaside resort town I've been to - it's got a gritty feel to it but still provided a nice ...

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