Day 4
Trip Start
Mar 19, 2008
1
4
61
Trip End
Jul 01, 2008
Day 4: Well, today I slept in too late, due to my being in a hotel. I ended up waking up a little before 12:00, blah. I rushed my ass to the train and got a cheapo ticket to Brugges, Belgium; the only city recommended by Rick Steves to visit in Belgium, which I highly disagree with. He wrote far too much about France. If you really want to visit France that bad, then buy the damn France book; any ways, I digress. Since I woke up so late, I ended up arriving in Bruges (Brugges in Flemish) at around 2:00. Waiting for the tourist office to open, I went and had a beer; holy crap Belgian beer is strong as hell, but delicious. One beer here does the work of three American beers. I made my way to a friendly TI desk, where I was set up in an awesome little American themed hostel called Charlie Rockets. Well, I left for the hostel, dragging my damn suitcase along the cobblestone streets (which isn't easy, seeing as it tips over every 5 seconds) and was immediately struck by the three awesome churches/towers that made up the city center. I didn't want to waste time trying to take pictures, and look after all my crap, so I just booked it to the hostel as quickly as I could. It was a 20ish minute walk to my hostel, with each block bringing into view another amazing building. This hostel is a million times better than my last one, in cleanliness, décor, location, services, ect. It has a nice bar with many screens showing all the futbol games, foosball tables, pool tables, CLEAN tile bathrooms. It's pretty sweet. After getting set up in my room, I walked through the town for a couple hours, missing all museums and such, but its all good. This city is great, so varied. There are three major languages spoken in Belgium; French, German, and Flemish. And then of course, there are the combinations of all three languages being used here and there. I ordered food in German at one stand, while the server took another order in French. My roommates are a married couple from Kansas, and a guy from Canada who had just come from a week in Ireland, including St. Patties day-the bastard. The married couple quit their jobs to travel Europe for as long as they had money, and the Canadian wanted to do traveling before heading to college. We all went out and had a few pints at a crazy ass locals bar, where the owner played either a siren and/or a record scratch before every song change, apparently he couldn't change songs without it. It was the most cliché bar of all time; flashing lights, crappy American music, the whole 9 yards. We then went back to our hostels bar for another pint, and this annoying ass girl from Jersey joined us, kind of a wet blanket. The Canadian followed the same "don't plan anything in advance" kind of trip that I'm doing, but he actually had to spend one night on a train, because he couldn't find a room. That must have sucked. No Internet in Bruges.
