So I took a bus from Cologne to Brussels, and then caught a train from Brussels to Bruges (it’s about an hour, so I could make day trips back there this week if I wanted to.  My main reason for coming here is of course nothing historic, but because In Bruges it’s one of my favorite movies.

note: The Bruges posts will undoubtedly reference quotes from the movie quickly, which are extremely likely to include foul language.

Bruges is *not* a shithole.  It’s rather small and narrow, and seeing the people swamping the cobblestone streets as I took the bus from the train station to the hostel was actually pretty cool (I’m about a 10 minute walk from the center).  Still, despite it being November, it’s a hopping little town/open-air museum.

After getting settled, I worked for quite some time in the hotel bar area (which has awesome WiFi, yay), and then strolled down to the city center in the evening.  Here’s a picture of the Basilica of the Holy Blood:

And one of the Belfry and square at night, which is surrounded by outdoor seating from cafes where people are having fairly pricey dinners and drinking nice Belgian beers.

Just a bit more casual strolling before heading back to the hostel.  It’s a rather wealthy city, and I’m so sick of Kabob places, that I couldn’t really find a place to my liking for dinner.  So I ordered a pizza from the bar and a couple beers all for a total of 9€.

The next morning they served “breakfast” in the bar area.  It’s actually just little pieces of bread they sell for .20€ in any supermarket, along with Nutella or cream cheese or jam.  Kind of sad.  But they do have free coffee, so I’m all for it.

And then I did an extensive walking day.  I figure I can get my grasp on the city and then figure out what I want to do the rest of the week.  There are TONS of chocolate shops, Belgian beer shops, cafes, and quite a few places selling waffles.  I walked into about 10 different chocolate shops and rated them based on smell to determine which ones I’ll go back to.

Here’s a picture of their little canal thing that I took during my stroll.

I also walked by the 2be Beer Wall, which apparently is a thing I’m supposed to take a picture of.  The point is they are really proud of their beer here.

So the next day I went back into the best smelling chocolate shop and bought some chocolates.  These pieces are like 1€ each. They better give me magical powers.  A lot of people are getting them as souvenirs for people, but I intend on eating all of these myself in the next two days.

There isn’t a whole lot to see here, so I’m more or less hiding out in Bruges for a few days.  Getting my reporting and billing done, catching up on some work, and gearing up to finish the trip.  This is the point at which I get exhausted and get too tired to keep moving too quickly.