Brugge Brugge

walking with our packs

After a short train ride from Brussels we landed in Bruges. Another destination that has a beautiful little old town with the lot; Cobblestones, churches, windmills, greenery, canals, bridges, statues, and lots of history.

The Belfry

The Provinciaal Hof.

Market square

Market square

Canals

Windmills

We went on a walking tour in the rain with a guide from America with an annoying New York accent. We were pointed out lots of cool things and told a lot of trivia about the movie ‘In Bruges’ starring Colin Farrell. One of our favourite things we saw was a dog that sits in a window overlooking one of the canals, all day every day and he is even in the movie!

doggy in the window

Canal selfie 

some good weather

Leah didn't like this

Astrid park

wait till it floods!

We stayed at a pretty cool hostel with a good kitchen and bar. Although the shower situation was pretty average because we had to walk down stairs and through the busy bar to get to the shower block and then hold an overhead chain constantly to keep the water running. Both of our roommates had separately come from Amsterdam. The New Zealand guy was cool and we helped him plan his last couple of weeks with some suggestions on where to visit. The weird old American guy just had a big bag of weed that stunk out our room.

Sunset from our window

Now more on beers from Belgium! The Trappist beer, originally made by monks vary from around 7 to 14 percent alcohol by volume. Leah and I tried some of the local Bruges Trappist beer from the bar in our hostel. Strong stuff! Most were flavoursome but one tasted like it had been mixed with too much vodka. Oh and of course we tried Belgium chocolate! There were plenty of fancy chocolate shops but we went the smart way and bought the same stuff cheaper from the supermarket and not the naughty ones shaped like human anatomy.

one of my favourite beers

Chocolate!

We also visited the oldest pub in Bruges. Built in 1515, it still had lots of old pictures and decoration from its 500 years of existence. We warmed ourselves with lip smacking soup and a beer.

Before we left Bruges we enjoyed some frities one last time before our bus ride into the Netherlands, yum! 

Arvi

out side the oldest pub

Brussels

Brussels

Into Belgium we went. First thing: Belgium fries are awesome! We had heard this from many travellers we’ve met over our trip so of course we had to try them. These delicious treats are twice fried with a long list of sauce options. I think we had fries about once a day and tried a selection of the sauces including tomato, pickle (to much vinegar and we burnt our tongues), tartar, curry, mayonnaise and special sauce.

fries and curry sauce 

Our Airbnb hosts had a really good map with suggested walking routes and points of interest like markets, comic walls, and famous stuff. We wondered through several street markets in our surrounding neighbourhoods, ate waffles and got stuck in the heavy rain in the afternoon.

so many cool and different houses next to each other 

Waffles!

Markets

Brussels old town square is really stunning and was full of life during our visit. Several grand buildings surround the open area where there are restaurant tables, food stalls, a big gazebo with a band playing and a little exhibition of some old army vehicles, along with 1000’s of tourists.

the square

There is a famous fountain in the old town of a little boy peeing. The funny and weird thing about this statue is that they dress him up. Every month his costume is changed and the old one is put in a museum. We saw him dressed up in a leopard suit.

Peeing boy in his little leopard suit

also a peeing girl stature close by

and a peeing dog

Belgium is known for their great selection of beer styles, some with very high alcohol percentage. We sampled a selection from our supermarket before heading to a local pub to try the ‘once in a lifetime’ beer.  This is a beer that is brewed and then served for only 1 day, making it a unique experience. This beer was had quite a sour fruitful taste and was strong, around 9 percent. We only had one.

walking through the town

just leaning 

chilling out

On a wet rainy Sunday walking around looking into all the closed shops we found a little café next to a kind of do it yourself recycled art making area, where locals come in to create art and build instillations. Very cool. We didn’t create art that day, Instead we played Scrabble and drank tea in the café for a couple of hours.

Scrabble and tea

Once the rain stopped we made our way to the African quarter (first African district on our trip) for some dinner. This district is alive and bustling with flea markets, reggae music and African restaurants. We enjoyed some yummy chicken wings, rice, spring rolls, fried banana and a selection of spicy sauces.

clear sky coming

African dinner

Arvi -

Cologne

From Prague, we caught a 13 hour night sleeper train to Cologne. We stayed in a 4 bed couchette which is a little compartment with 4 beds/padded benches. We each had pillows, sheets and a blanket. We were quite excited for our little sleep over and after our picnic dinner of bread cheese and pickles we settled into our bunks. To say we had a restful nights sleep would be lying, being woken up a couple of times by the loud noise of carriages being removed at certain stops. But it was still a fun experience and saved us a night’s accommodation.

so much room for activities

but arvi didn't want to play

night sky from the train

a spot of reading

time for bed

When we were arrived at our hostel around 8:30am we were pleasantly surprised to find that we were able to check into our empty room right away! So we went for a 3 hour nap to catch up on our lack of sleep from the previous night.

The weather in Cologne was much noticeably colder and rainy.  We took this opportunity to catch up on sleep, read and relax a bit as we were both beginning to feel a little run down again. Most days we slept in, spent a couple of hours sightseeing and then relaxed in the hostel for the rest of the afternoon. We did a lot of cooking seeing our hostel had a great kitchen and there was a huge, cheap supermarket on our street. We cooked up some awesome meals like chicken schnitzel sandwiches, fish burgers and Asian noodles. 

the sky is darkening 

cloudy skys

While Cologne is more modern than most of the cities we have been to, there are still parts of the old town scattered around the city.  Probably the most impressive landmark was the grand cathedral, situated in the middle of the city, right near the main train station. No matter how many of these huge gothic style cathedrals we see, I am still amazed by their size and design. While exploring the city we stumbled across other pieces of the old city wall, found a park full of sculptures, walked along the famous Rhine river and crossed the main bridge which is covered in lover’s padlocks.

Cologne Cathedral

Cologne Cathedral

a head sculpture

along the Rhine river

in the fisherman's quarter

sculpture park

across the Rhine river

running 

yet another bridge with 1000's of locks

We also decided to visit the Gestapo museum. This was a building where many people were imprisoned during their interrogation during Nazi rule, anywhere from a couple of days to months. The most interesting thing was seeing the cells where the ‘traitors’ were kept in cramped, unhygienic conditions and reading translations of the writings and drawings etched into the walls. I found it surprising that the Gestapo let the prisoners write their thoughts and messages to family on the walls without punishment; it really gives a great insight into their experiences in the building.  

the messages left

Now we leave Germany for a while to explore Belgium and The Netherlands.

             -Leah