Hotel de Milliano Breskens

... 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 ...

... riding the bus with my huge backpack. Things always seem tougher and the rides longer when I have to haul it around with me. I won't miss it that much, I'm afraid. Anyways, it was acutally only about a 10 minute bus ride to the area where Johanna lives,and I found her apartment right away.

I greeted her and we had some really nice conversation, and she made some delicious ...

Today was a many miles day - around 500 in fact, or about 800km! We all met up in a carpark on the outskirts of Macon, then travelled in convoy north. As we were travelling such a long way today, we all decided to use the motorways, as despite being toll roads and meaning we'd see a bit less scenery, it was well worth it as we'd get to stop for longer on the way and get there earlier. The tolls were quite expensive compared to what I'm used to (it cost us about 21 Euros/NZ$42 for the ...

... went to as well (hey, it was raining the whole time). This was considerably better than the fry museum (although not as funny) and we got a demonstration on how they make the famous Belgian Prailines.
Other than that, our 3 days in Brugge were filled with more choclate, beer, and fries (and one waffle) and admiring what the cute little town has to offer. Now we're off to Amsterdam... wish us luck!

... 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 ...

... 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 ...

... English detective show or something. We had a great night out and ran back to the hostel in the rain.
We walked all around the town and saw little parks and local areas to the north of the town where people actually live. Around town there are heaps of chocolate shops and even a TinTin shop! The clothing stores are all fancy and there are mouth-watering pink-decorated candy stores.
Our visit to Ghent was nice too. It is ...

We leave! Frank and I, and also his friend Johanna, who will join us for this first trip. Fine to me, since, having no sailing experience at all, I can use all the help! I start by taking a pill against seasickness, since I have no idea if I am to be sick or not, so I prefer to anticipate!
Frank and Johanna are a good team, I let them activate themselves while I enjoy the trip. Weather is nice, not a ...

... are starting to become abundant too, cyclists get treated like royals here, we have the right of way over cars everywhere. Very very cool. Got a bit more bold pitching my tent tonight. Went into the middle of a paddock opposite a local farmers house. Was thinking to myself 'what would Les Paddison be thinking if...' Pulled it off nicely though, packed up and f......d off in the morning leaving only a tent print in the grass.

... they had real bunnies in cages on display outside the store soooooooo cute! I was petting them when my dad took a pic :D Discovery of the day: a lot of ppl around here have cellphones, no surprise there though, but the cool thing is, they don't really CALL each other, they just send text messages to one another! I didn't believe it at first when my dad told me until i started noticing around the streets and in the pubs ppl ...