Vierschare Damme

... 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 ...

... 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 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!

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 ...

... The Grote Markt (Big Town Square) was huge and surrounded by cafes and gorgeous buildings such as the city hall. Many cities we've been to have similar squares with some being much more exceptional then others, Brugge included. We walked around the city, passing over the canals and peering into the churches. We went into the Beguinage in the city which was once owned by the Benguines who you could say were the first feminists. Their ...

... place where we enjoyed relaxing at night.
The highlights for me were the pubs and beer cafes we found thanks to the map where I attempted to try as many different beers as possible. After 3 days I had managed quite a few.The pubs included tiny local bars hidden in alleyways and pubs boasting the number of beersthey had available. One in particular held the guinness record a few years ago at around 2000 types but today ...

... willy if he likes you he lets you in, if not he says he is full. The local boys talked the talk and got us in. Everyone was tanked including Mum (who everyone called Mum) and after Willy's we all ended up playing pool at a local pub and Mum decided she wanted to keep the gum ball machine and tried dragging it out until the manager said he was calling the ...

... highway with cars and trucks going at least 120kms and we were pedalling our little town bikes furiously to get off the highway... after going through a few our little towns we FINALLY made it back to Bruges probably 3 hours later!!! What an experience!! When we got back into the township we decided to walk around the town and check out the little shops (mainly the chocolate shops) as we had heard of all the ...

... chocolate and vanilla cake ........... Very nice...... We then found a little pub had a beer and watched the cricket. Australia v Sri Lanka live which was pretty cool. The next day we went to Keukenhof gardens advertised as the "greatest flower show on earth" How could we come all this way to Holland and not see some tulips and windmills!!! All I can say is in the Netherlands YOU PAY FOR EVERYTHING the dutch definitely know how to make money ...