Day Two

This morning I got up early and tried out our peculiar shower. It has a tub base, but it's only the size of a single stall shower. Quite odd.

We took a day trip to Bruges (or Brugge to the Dutch) and it was pretty awesome other than some speed bumps I ran into. Trains were the bane of my existence today. I didn't realize I needed my passport to validate my rail pass so I left it at my apartment. I ended up having to buy a ticket to Bruges. On the way back from Bruges, I tried to buy another ticket back and I swiped my card just like I had done in the morning to get there and the cashier asked to see it. He told me I wasn't able to get a ticket because I had written "See ID" on the back of my card rather than signing it and even though I handed him my driver's license he still refused to sell me a ticket. He wasn't very nice about it either. What a cranky, old jerk. I didn't even have enough of my own cash to pay for it so luckily someone in my group offered to pay for it and I will pay them back as soon as I go to an ATM.

Actually being in Bruge was really great, even though the trip there and back was horrible. We walked all over and went into three different cathedral-type churches. One of them had a tower we were able to climb to the top of. There were 366 stairs to get to the top! I didn't get too overly tired, I was mostly just getting freaked out by how narrow the stairs were and the fact that most of them didn't have risers. There was only one set of stairs and both the people going up and the people going down had to share them. That was a nightmare. Once I finally made it to the top, it turned out to be a really great view of Bruges.

After getting back down from the tower, and living, we walked around some more, had some dinner, and then headed back to Antwerp.

Typical street in Bruges

Pipe organ in one of the cathedrals

The tower we climbed to the top of

View of Bruges from the top of the tower

Neat building in one of the squares