In Brugge

Because the hostel made us wait until 4 to check in yesterday and there wasn’t a secure location to put our bags (they suggested we leave them in the common room and they would “keep an eye on them” but we didn’t feel that was safe), we didn’t do much apart from going out for dinner at a restaurant called Bierbrasserie Cambrinus after checking in.  Although the food we had wasn’t as good as Le Fin de Siecle in Brussels, it was decent and there was a huge selection of 400 beers to choose from – the drink menu is one inch thick and I had to spend 10 min reading it to decide!  It was a nice relaxing start to our time in Brugge and today we found out what Brugge really has to offer… (more…)

Comparison of Accomodations

Today we’ve moved on to Bruges (also spelt Brugge if you go by the Dutch version), a medieval city in the northwest region of Belgium. We’re staying at a hostel called Lybeer Travellers, and my main thought is “thank God we’re only here for two nights!”  Apart from the fact that we’re in a dorm room with two other guys who don’t seem to understand the common courtesy of coming and going quietly when you’re staying in a dorm room, the hostel itself is in bad need of repair and the bathrooms are horrendous.  I tried taking a shower and the water went from freezing cold to scorching hot every five minutes so I had keep waiting for that brief moment when the water would start changing temperatures to splash myself with a bit of normal temperature water!  It was not a fun experience… (more…)

Some New Friends & Le Fin de Siecle Again!

One of the best things about travelling is the friends you make along the way, especially the ones you really keep in touch with and try to see again (let’s face it, most of us will only see each other once in our lifetime if we don’t live in the same area).  We’ve met lots of people during our travels so far, but there have only been a handful we’ve regularly kept in touch with since.  I think today we’ve added two more to that list – Allie and Ryan from Florida who are in Brussels for their honeymoon and are staying at the same B&B as us

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More Good Food & Beer

After a day of walking around the historic town center of Brussels, I am happy to report that there are some really clean and really nice parts of town, but it smells like pee in lots of areas!  Perhaps the fact that a statue called the Manneken Pis (Dutch for little man urinating) is a famous Brussels landmark should have given me a hint of what to expect… (more…)

The Best Food So Far!

After a good nights sleep at Novotel (four star really does make difference!), we made our way to Brussels this afternoon where we encountered the most confusing transit system so far (worse than Berlin!).  Our directions to our B&B said to take tram # 3 and it took us half an hour of wandering to figure out where to catch tram #3 – instead of having one central tram/bus stop at the train station like most cities, there were about 6 different tram stops all over and around the train station so we had to run around checking each stop to see which tram stopped there.  Tram # 3 turned out to be in the least obvious place possible, underground where the metro was, and we couldn’t figure out why it’s called a tram instead of a metro because they look identical! 

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