Hotel Irene Oostkapelle

... other Churches.

I did have a couple of moments with brief drizzles, but overall I had some beautiful, sunny weather and I enjoyed a few hours of walking around Brugges (while eating a delicious waffle for part of it), before returning on the 25 minute train back to Ghent.

Which is where I am now, and I'll go eat at a friend of Johanna's house for dinner tonight. It is, by the way, definitely ...

... fuel in Dijon, which (at least the parts we saw) didn't look all that great, in contrast to the rest of the country which I thought was great.

Our final stop in France was in Metz, where we grabbed lunch, had a quick walk around the markets and I bought a crepe with strawberry jam (delicious). We had a walk through St Stephens Cathedral - a massive church whose construction started in around 1220 and finished in 1520. It is a very spectacular building, incredibly tall and with ...

Brugge may be a fairy tale city, but the thing they don't tell you is that the whole place smells like french fries! The Flemish like to fry everything from meat to fries to waffles...twice. When we arrived in town, we had JUST missed the beer festival (of course) that had taken place all weekend long. So we did the next best thing, and went to a pub that serves the most Belgian beer. 't Brugge was ...

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 ...

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 ...

... a really really bad stomach ache from them – knives stabbing me type pain. So that kinda killed the night unfortunately, I wasn’t sure if I was going to start feeling sick or what, so Megg and I headed back to Bruges (don’t worry I was fine though!). Note to self DON’T EAT BRUSSELS MUSSELS.

Jac and Bec came to Bruges for the day, so we met them for breakfast (I had a pancake!) before we headed off to our final backpacking destination - Paris!

So, We got up and caught a train to Bruges. As we walked towards our hostel I noticed that everything was so nice and so clean. Then we made it to the fountains. I fell in love then. The houses and buildings are so cute. They are side to side with neat little rooftops. The streets were stone and curvy. It was just so nice.

When we got to our hostel the guy working was by far the ...

... light up at night. Luckily Mother Nature gave us a break on this week and we were able to enjoy the sun - most days. Isabella and Sam enjoyed the activities organised for kids and the big boys enjoyed sailing around amungst the thousands of wind surfers ! So in the middle of Summer ???? we enjoyed a pretty typical dutch holiday - just before we had to go - dare i say it .... back to WORK !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!

... and made him behead his loyal servant. The town released him on provisions but as soon as he left the town he claimed that Brugge is no longer allowed to hold festivities and markets and has to suffer the burden of housing "long necked birds".... they were thus made to breed swans, which are now lining one particular part of the river and there are just so many! They are beautiful and a very popular attraction, thanks to that nameless-king.