Hotel Kingston Ostende

... and an outdoor beer garden. We had nice huge meals that we struggled to finish and we enjoyed a good Aussie shiraz with it.

Day 2 – Wednesday 23rd September – We awoke to our alarms so that we would make the 8:30 breakfast, which was my only complaint about this place. The breakfast was great but the 8:30am set time was a bit annoying, but at least you were up early to start the day this way.

Our first stop was the tourist office, we had decided to ...

... sales person or hotel desk person for what they want and they don’t care about who’s behind them. Then when they’re finished, and you think they’re on their way, one person leaves and the next person in the group starts the process all over again. In a restaurant they’ll sit down, start to order, then talk among themselves and tell the waiter they’ve changed their mind. I don’t understand Flemish ...

... cobbled streets, red shingled roofs, canals, and historic buildings.

We first walked to Bruge's cathedral, which was still great to see despite all the cathedrals that I’ve been to already. We then headed toward the main plaza along with the bunches of other tourists flocking around Bruges. On the way, we had our first truly Belgian experience: waffles. Needless to say, I was ridiculously excited, and my waffle-chocolate sauce ...

Hello faithful readers. We arrived home early Monday morning from a long weekend in Belgium, and it was one of our very favorites yet. We left very early Thursday morning after a late night at the Green Day concert here in Berlin and boarded a train bound for Belgium with a brief stop in Cologne or Köln, as ze Germans spell it. Right outside the train station was the famous Cathedral or Dom, and it was one of the most impressive pieces of ...

... leave Brugge. We did redeem ourselves by climbing the Belfry which is a medieval tower which formerly housed a treasury and the municipal archives and served as an observation post for spotting fires and other dangers. It is 83 metres high and there are 366 steps up a narrow space-not for the faint hearted. The tower actually leans 1 metre to the east. Before we climbed, Katelyn had complained about the bells ringing constantly but we realised that that was ...

... question how fresh the chocolate could possibly be. Some of the displays did look a bit sad and to my amazement, lots of bubbles. I won’t go into detail here about them, but I visited what my lecturer said were the top 5 shops and bought some to taste. I also asked the lady at the hotel who was her favourite chocolatier and I must say Dumon who she said, were up there in the top five. The only thing was ...

... which houses what is said to be a sample of Jesus' blood. We decided to hit the chocolate museum, Choco-Story which was very informative. Greg didn’t make it past the first room because it was stuffy, but sat down in the demo room where he said he learnt a lot. Of course I was very interested in everything as it gave a great history of chocolate from the Mayans to present day in Europe. The demonstration was of making a chocolate with a praline filling which we got to sample ...

... walking city where the streets would only be as crowded with people as it is with pigeons. Unfortunately...very unfortunately, we were dead wrong because we arrived on a special Saturday...it was the local 'Free Day'. All the squares of the town, including all the streets, were TOTALLY filled with local families enjoying the free activities for kids and adults ...

... war paraphernalia including rifles with the bullets still in the chamber (indicating they were left over from a casualty). We went to the largest British War Cemetary at Tyne Cot. It contains nearly 12,000 graves, of which 85% were never identified and the headstone just reads "A Soldier of the Great War". It was unreal walking through the cemetery, realizing that an entire generation was wiped out by the fighting. Probably the greatest tragedy ...

Today we travelled to Belgium with our parents. We started out in the city of Brugge. This is a beautiful city full of (surprise) canals, cathedrals, and incredible architecture. The city is extremely old- many of the buildings dating back to the 1600's. The thing that makes Brugge unique is that even though it is a large city, you feel as if it is very small. All of the streets are narrow and lined with cozy little cafe's, waffle ...