Sat. July 17th. Today I went to Brugge. Woke up early as normal, hopped on the EuroStar (again) and took an hour ride to a smaller city in Belgium called Brugge. When I think of what Belgium would like like, I pictured it like Brugge. It was this little town with rivers/cannals running through it, tons of little shops all around, and amazing architecture.
The first activity in Brugge was a boat cruise through the city. This was really fun and beautiful. We were able to see the whole city by boat. After the boat ride we went shopping!!!! Well, I should say we went looking, because no one bought much. The most I bought was two post cards cuz everything else was pretty expensive.
All six of us girls (Alex, Kati, Elle, Jordan, Chelsea, and I) ate lunch at a cute little place that was facing one of the open markets. We sat on the patio and had warm sandwiches with beer white beer and cheery beer. After lunch we walked and shopped some more. There was a big square that was the center of town and it had the tallest building in Belgium. I really wanted to climb up to the top, but it cost money and no else wanted to take on the challenge.
We left Brugge at about 4pm and headed back to the EuroStar for the hour long journey home. This time on the EuroStar instead of sitting on the floor by the doors we had to stand the whole time! I ended up standing by this grandpa and his grand daughter who spoke french. The little girl was really nice at first and was trying to talk to me, but of course I couldn't understand anything she said. At one point there was this guy who spoke broken English and broken French, and he tried really hard to translate for the little girl. It was so random and weird!
Once we got back to the hotel I went to my room to change and get ready for BEER TASTING! The tour guide took us to this place called BeerMania. Let's just say it wasn't in the nicest area. We tried so many differnt types of beer and learn a ton about beer. At the end of it, the tour guide, Mark, bought everyone a glass of Chocolate Beer... which was really good. The husband and wife that ran the beer tasting were originally from Iran, but met in Belgium and now they run the business together. (I thought that was interesting just because David is in Iraq, plus who moves from Iran to Belgium, of all places?)
After the beer tasting we left and went back to the main square, Grand Place. By this point it was about midnight and our whole group went to the square to eat dinner. It was pretty quiet when we got down there, but we all sat down at a resturant and ordered pizzas! It took forever to get our food! When they started handing out everyone else's dishes the waiter realized we didn't have any food, so we had to wait even longer because they had forgotten to make our order. Well, when we did get our pizza, it was amazing! After eating we went home and went to bed... zzzzzz :)
