Hotel-Restaurant Franky Blankenberge

I slept really well last night at Johanna's place (yes, I promise to make entries -even if they're short- for past days/cities). Then this morning I took the bus under a light drizzle to the Ghent main train station. There I paid my 6.6 Euros for a round trip (weekend price) to Brugges (Brugge/Brujas), which I had heard so much about.

I had quite the positive attitude, even as the rain fell against my ...

... 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 ...

... two. We decided to try them both. They sure do like their mayonaise in Belgium, and they have a ton of different sauces that go with the fries... the one on the right is the better one.
The next day we went to possibly the worst museum ever... the French Fry museum. Yes, an entire museum dedicated to the harvesting and frying of the potato. So bad but pretty hilarious, and of course you get french ...

... 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 ...

... started forming in the 12th century and although they devoted themselves to God and the Catholic Church they were not nuns and were able to marry and keep their property. They eventually changed their beliefs and became more of mystics and were eventually thought to be heretics and were condemned by the church. They have since greatly declined in numbers and the Beguinage in Brugge is no longer functional. It is beautiful though ...

... the bar that we had met during dinner at a local restaurant called de Hobbit.It was a tiny little place with little tables. Steve had ribs and I had lamb with feta cheese- delicious! We also met an older British couple at the bar that we sat and chatted with as well. They were very nice and had interesting stories about Europe. The man looked like he had time-warped out of the 70s or 80s and he looked so British to me, like from ...

... all through the city. It was gorgeous. After that we stopped in a church really fast to see Michelangelo's Madonna and Child then we went to the local brewery to take a tour and get a free beer, walked around the city then went to pick up Josh.

If anyone is ever in Bruges there is a little restaurant, The Hobbit, that has all you can eat ribs for pretty cheap and right across the ...

I have found the love of my life and they are Melk Biscuits. They're sold at Aldi for 1€ and they are delicious! They're little cookies with white and chocolate cream on top, mmmmm! Anyway, today was a very productive day. Drew and I got our entire presentation on the Modernization Theory ready for tomorrow and Jessica and I got our entire ...

... fit!) we crashed it bed unfortunately in our 12 bedder room which was almost full (11 people) everyone else obvioulsy decided they were having a big one that night and all came in at different times in the early morning and dropped just about everything on the wooden floors and were almost jumping on their squeaky bunks.... lotsa sleep that night! (12 people definitely too much in one small room!) Today being Thursday we caught the train to a ...

... leading the pack. This peaked our curiosity and we went to see what that was all about. Apparently, the nun's are allowed to have a day "off" to say to go out and enjoy in the town. They don't drink but they smoke and dance. Adrien had go at it with both the nuns for a bit (among other people). I ended up leaving around 2AM after joining the train for a bit and chatting with the locals. The second day was more relaxed as I ...