Day 6: Brussels and Bruges

Miles logged: 4,129
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I had an early flight from Dublin to Brussels, and landed in Belgium at 9am. I took the train into the city and explored for a few hours while hitting up the major tourist attractions. I went to the Grand Palace, which was incredible and beautiful, and then the Mannequin Pis, which has got to be the most overrated attraction of all time. The statue might be 2 feet high, and if I hand't seen all the tourists gawking I probably would have never thought to glance up. The Belgian waffles, however, were not overrated and were in fact amazing and far better than the ones typically served in the US. I also dropped into some interesting art stores. Overall, Brussels seemed like a city with potential, but I didn't feel very disappointed that I needed to be getting on my way to Bruges via a very nice train ride through the Belgian countryside.

Bruges, on the other hand, is incredible and wonderfully picturesque. Absolutely gorgeous, with interesting shops, lots of chocolate stores, and a beautiful main square. The town is totally overrun by tourists, but given how beautiful Bruges is, as it was once one of the wealthiest and important medieval towns in Europe and survived generally untouched during both world wars, the town could not be more scenic and its popularity is understandable.

I checked into my hostel about 7pm, got some laundry going, and started wandering the main square. The Flemish are very proud of their pomes frites (NOT French Fries), so I decided to indulge. I really didn't find them as significantly better than those found in the US (unlike the Belgian waffles). Still, it was pretty magical to walk around in Bruges eating my pomes frites served with mayonnaise as twilight was setting.

The hostel that I'm staying in has a bar on the first floor that serves a wide choice of Belgian beers at pretty great prices, with a staff that's very helpful and more than willing to offer advice on which beers might be appealing. The hostel is probably about 90% Americans, which made for easy conversations and getting to meet a few people. Unfortunately, the bar made the hostel very loud all night, and it was tough to get a good night's sleep in the place.

Overall, Bruges has been as wonderful as promised and I'm loving Belgium. I'll update this post tomorrow with some photos!

Now these are tasty!

Now that I look at this photo, I think it's a little weird how I'm holding his arm...hmmm

That's it?