Wow! What an insane 48 hours it has been! It is hard to believe that just two days ago we weren't sure if we were going to make it here because our initial flight to Philadelphia was cancelled and our flight to Belgium sat on the runway for an hour before we could take off! Well we made it and I am writing this from our beautiful apartment in the city of Brugge in northwest Belgium.
Yesterday after we arrived, we had quite the adventure looking for the Hostel where we could store our luggage but finally made it there and spent the rest of the day walking around Brussels unencumbered. We started our day with a cafe au lait and some famous Belgian waffles (which were amazing!). The Hostel is parallel to a very busy shopping street so we walked along that for a bit and got a cell phone. Then we headed to the spectacular Grand Place where there are a few museums and the Brussels City Hall. We walked around the Grand Place and up and down some of the surrounding streets to get a feel for the City. It is very crowded and very diverse. There are a lot of tourists around right now but I expect that will die down once the semester starts. We saw the famous Mannekin Pis and the monument to the Buls. We stopped at a little cafe and I got my first legal beer! Unfortunately, the fact that it was legal was the best part. It was called Primus and it tasted just like a Bud Lite... utterly disappointing.
We returned to the Hostel, found our way to the train station, and got on a train to Brugge where we are spending the next few days. It is a beautiful city populated with only 20,000 people! There are more bikes on the road than cars and more tourists than locals. Everyone is carrying a map and/or camera (which makes me feel better about doing the same thing). All the streets are cobble stone and all the buildings fit in perfectly with the 14th century churches that are the landmarks in the City. Last night we got lost again trying to find our apartment (Dutch is very hard to read and the numbers on the houses do NOT go in numerical order) but found our way there and lay down for a nice nap. The beer I had with dinner was much better; a blonde Olney which tasted a little like Blue Moon but darker and heavier.
This morning we learned the all important lesson of not underestimating jet lag and got a rather late start. We spent the day in Oostend, a city on the coast, and took the tram (looked just like the Baltimore Light Rail) all the way up and down the coast, getting off at small beach towns to eat and walk around. It was overcast all day but nice for walking since it wasn't too hot. The main takeaway is that beach towns all over the world are very similar. It was just like Ocean City (but cooler because everything was in Dutch)! I had a Leffe-Blonde (which was very similar to the Olney and equally delicious) while eating a crepe with strawberries and whipped cream and looking over at the beach... life here is very difficult.
Tomorrow we will visit a few of the museums and attractions in Brugge. There is a chocolate museum, frites museum, diamond museum, and brewery among many other attractions that should make the next two days great!
More to come soon, thanks for reading. Happy Trails!
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