Fairytale Town

Today we went to Bruges. Especially after watching that Colin Farrell movie, and with the nice day of sunshine, the town was simply charming. We arrived at 11 AM and wandered the streets and found the bell tower after finding yet another waffle. This time I got caramel and white powdered sugar. Belgian waffles are a surefire way to have a good morning. Anyway, the bell tower was where we met David (another CS host), Hannah, Lila, and Stella (another CS guest) at noon. The meeting spot worked out great, which is always exciting :) We then spent the whole day together!

First we climbed to the top of the bell tower. It was only 4 euros, which was awesome because in the movie there is this funny part about how it's 5 euros. Since the movie was made a couple of years ago I was fully expecting it to be more. I think 5 must have been the adult price, which is now 8. Luckily, youths under 25 got in for 4. So we climbed all 366 steps and made it to the top! A fun little hike. A lot of the bell tower is actually under reconstruction though so views weren't as good as the movie led me to believe. The best part about climbing the bell tower was that at the very top I saw that somebody had scrawled one of the funniest quotes from the movie ("In Bruges") on the wall. I started laughing so hard and pointed it out to the others. We were all so psyched that we had watched it yesterday and understood the joke. Then we added another quote from the movie as our contribution to fellow tourists :) After we found the first one, we found a couple more up there too; it was like an Easter egg hunt.

At the bottom of the bell tower, there was the best street musician I have ever heard in my life. He was playing the sweetest, most calming, relaxing street music using a didgeridoo, a hang (never heard of this instrument before today), and some bells. And he was making bank doing it. I don't usually flip a coin to tube/street musicians but this guy had me hooked, it was so beautiful. It was just extremely peaceful and pleasant to listen to, I wish you could all hear it!

Then we wandered, wandered, and did some more wandering. The town is so cute so walking around was great fun. The architecture is amazing. We went to a couple of nice churches, one of which has the famous Michelangelo Madonna sculpture in it. Weirdest of all about the town of Bruges though is how quite it is. I feel like everybody is whispering there. Cars seem like a major noise disturbance. There is no honking or yelling, nobody moves quickly, and seriously everything is almost eerily quiet. I've never been in a touristy place like that before. There was still the tourism energy, it was just...serene.

Eventually we all started getting hungry, but it took us FOREVER to actually decide on a place and sit down. Part of this I think was due to our kind impromptu tour guide David who kept getting caught up in engrossing conversations that led to a very unfocused attempt to find a restaurant. When we finally did, we all ended up ordering spaghetti bolognaise (I love that stuff). Laura and I split a bowl (which was only 7.5 euros to begin with) which ended up being an awesome decision because the bowls were HUGE! And the kind waiter brought us lots of extra Gruyere cheese. Obviously I ordered a beer, but my excuse this time is that it was a darker beer brewed in Bruges (I love that...brewed in Bruges, haha), so it was uniquely different from anything else I have tried in Belgium thus far. Needless to say, it was delicious. Beer + pasta = happy belly. Getting a little chubby around the edges, but we leave Belgium tomorrow and I have another 3 months before I'm back to work it off!

Lunch conversation naturally circled back around to CouchSurfing; Stella is from China and is new to CS. She doesn't have many friends or references so we told her to friend us all and we would leave her references to help her get started! She is studying in England right now and just visiting Belgium for fun. I love the diversity of people and languages I am constantly surrounded by.

After lunch we went to some building that apparently has some of Jesus' super old blood in it. Kind of weird to me...A lot of weird imagery going on in my head about who collected a little vile of his blood and how that came about. Outside of that building, a conversation about religion was triggered which was actually really fun. Laura went to Catholic school through the 8th grade so we asked her a lot of questions and heard different opinions, thoughts, questions, and answers from all six of us. Really interesting conversation! I love traveling for fun and getting into thoughtful, academic conversations where you can tell peoples' brains are engaged and they are genuinely interested in learning from their surroundings and company. I think people probably learn a lot more that way, when they're not being forced and don't have to get a grade for what they retain.

Then we went to this gorgeous park with a really cool stature, cute little fountain, elegant swans, napping ducks, and the prettiest blue and gold gazebo! After a photo shoot in the park, we embarked on a mission to find the train station...being completely disoriented and having shoddy directions, this proved to be a bit of a challenge. We ended up missing our train by about 5 minutes! Bummer. The next one came in half an hour though so we just sat in the train station. 10 minutes before the train was supposed to leave, Laura and I went to the bay. Apparently the train had been there for a while and was already almost fully boarded. There were no seats! So we had to sit on the steps for the first 20 minutes until we got to a stop and people got off the train. It was painfully ironic though since we had literally just been sitting in the station for 20 minutes...we easily could have gone to the bay earlier and gotten good seats had we even considered that being a problem. oh well. We made the best of it and documented our tenure on the steps.

Once off the train, we stopped by a convenience store and picked up some frozen pizzas. The gang we were with today were planning on coming over to Estelle's apartment, and we told Estelle we would make her dinner. Pretty lame picking up pizzas, but we were short on time and since it was Easter Monday lots of real grocery stores were closed. We arrived at Estelle's at 8 PM to find her in the middle of a card game with some of her friends. She was so excited to have us meet her friends, it was so cute! We heated up the oven and got the pizzas going (there were a lot of them). Soon the rest of the group came over, and we spent the evening chatting, eating, drinking, looking at pictures, laughing, etc. It was wonderful. I love CouchSurfing.

Quotes:
"I straight up saw galaxies." - Hannah

"I'm sorry I called you an inanimate object; I was upset." - Quote from "In Bruges" that I wrote at the top of the bell tower, I think it is so freaking funny.

Accomplishments:
Climbing to the top of the bell tower / spending a day in a town where I know Colin Farrell has been!
Trying a beer brewed in Bruges.

Nice People Alert:
Waffle Lady - she did not rip us off in the slightest, she piled on that caramel sauce and sugar!!!

Travel Tip:
Instead of getting frustrated, just take pictures of whatever happened and turn it into a funny store to tell later.


I am a little sad to be leaving Belgium, but excited for everything that is to come. I can't believe we're only (less than) two weeks in. I'm already having such an amazing time and meeting such incredible people. I am also sad to be parting ways with Sophie, Hannah, Lila, and Stella, the fellow travelers I spent time with here - as well as our amazing hosts Kevin and Estelle. But I am also sure that we are going to meet so many other cool people. And now I have even more friends all over the world! And, AND, Estelle is going to be in Paris during the time we'll be in Paris (in three months) so we are planning on meeting up with her again there - super exciting! Anyway...one last waffle tomorrow. Can't wait :)