Pand17 Brugge

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 ...

... and pasta dish with tomato sauce, mushrooms, celery, onion, garlic, etc. Fantastic and delicious. Afterwards, we met up with a few (mainly local) CSers at a bar near her house, where we played some board games and "werewolf" which wasn't too bad. Most of them were quite friendly and I had a nice time.

We came home not too late, as I was to go to Brugges the next day.

... well I think, travelling over 1400 miles (or over 2300km) and the car ran faultlessly! Overall it was an awesome holiday, we all had heaps of fun and all said we'd like to do it again. The next one is in early May, and is going to be a motorsport themed event, running through France to Monaco, ending at the Monaco Grand Prix. I'd really like to go on this rally, but won't be able to as I'll be on the Topdeck training trip!

... on the final 3 or so hours of our trip to Brugge near the coast. We were a little late arriving....we were supposed to meet up at 7:30pm for the awards ceremony at 8pm, but we didn't make it to the bar until 9:30 - oops! We received our medals and bottle of cheap wine for finishing, then went off to find some dinner.
As it was now past 10:30 we had to go for the first restaurant we could find, and we went to a place selling Argentinian food of all things! I'd never had ...

... 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 ...

... br>Pam and Glenn Said:

We enjoyed a beautiful, sunny day walking and floating around this “coastal” city, as the locals call it. The Belgians have their wind power down pat. We saw the new high tech ones as well as the ones used years ago. They also seem a little more humble about their beer. They already know they have the best so they don’t seem to boast about it. They only drink it! But no kidding, the Belgian beer is wonderful and so are the waffles.

... priority number one was to get my hands on an elusive VAMA VECHE shirt. But first, Anthony and Carlie from Toronto, along with Gary and I, decided to be tourists and go see some touristy things. Unfortunately Gary somehow got lost in the masses and we didn’t end up hanging out with him. The three of us carried on and went to the Chocolate museum and tried a Belgian waffle. Belgian chocolate and waffles, gooooood.

Then I went back ...

... the sounds of war and screaming in the war the entire time. It was very informative and was presented as a story with audio, pictures and video so people unfamiliar or very familiar with war all had something to gain from the experience. Next, the tour went to the country sides and showed us the ruts in the land, that was once completely flat and now has m***********s in the ground from land mines from the Germans. The last ...

... we will leave it at that) Dave was starting to loosen up a little. We headed back to the hostel, chatted for a bit (thats when I found out Dave was in school to become a youth pastor, and I had a hand in corrupting the poor guy) and we headed off to bed! The next moring I woke up late, really late! I only wanted to do a few things so here was the game plan! 1. Climb to the top of the bell tower 2. See the Famous Sculture by Michelangeo, Madona and Child 3. Put my hand on the blood ...

... additional 220 stairs. I mentioned in the last blog that my legs are going to rock when I get back...and this is even more proof! The tour lasted about 1 1/2 hours, and after walking around the brewery with our backpacks on...we were all pretty ready for that beer! After enjoying a free token of appreciation from the tour...we hurried back to the train station in order to catch the next train to Maastricht. Brugge was an a cute little city...which I hope to visit again someday ...