Day 8: Bruges

Today involved a lot more cow spotting and bike riding.

I was having so much fun in Bruges bike-riding/waffle-eating/chocolate-sampling/bier-tasting that I would have liked to stay another night, but the weekends in Bruges are very busy and I found that all of the best hostels were full. So I decided I'd spend until the late afternoon in Bruges and then head towards Berlin, stopping for the night about half-way in Cologne.

After enjoying the previous day's bike ride so much, I decided to skip my planned art museum visit (half of it was closed for renovations, anyway) and rent a bike to do some more biking. The tour guide gave us biking maps of the area with suggested routes, so I decided to take a tour on my own to see the Belgian coast.

After renting a bike for a half-day, I headed out of the city and towards the ocean. The ride to the nearest shore town wasn't as scenic as the prior day's tour, but it was still quite nice and within an hour I was looking out at what I believe to be the North Sea, facing towards England. The first two towns along my ride appeared to be primarily industrial shipping ports, but as I continued, the scenery improved. The third town turned out to be a very nice beach town, where I had a tasty lunch that I would best describe as fried gooey fishcake sticks. After lunch, I slowly continued back, getting a bit lost along the way but fortunately able to quickly path out a new route when I rode past a turn because I was too busy gawking at the cows and missed a sign. Overall, the ride was beautiful, and I swung through a few cute little towns along the way, but it would have been prettier had the weather been sunnier.

The Belgian coast

Pier along the coast

Belgian resort town

These bathhouses were in cute rows and were very pretty long the beach

Is that a black sheep along the canal?

I got back to Bruges and cruised for a bit longer around the city. At this point, the cloudy weather had turned to drizzle and the cobblestone streets were becoming very slick. Also, after 4.5 hours, my legs were starting to feel like they were going to fall off. I returned the bike just in time; 5 minutes later, the skies opened up and it was pouring. I dashed to the nearest waffle shop, indulged in one last authentic Belgian waffle, waited for the rain to pass, and then swung by my hostel to grab my bags and send some emails.

I started to head towards the train station, but took my sweet time and got a little distracted, so I missed the train I had intended on taking. I knew there was a train an hour later, but unfortunately the later Brussels-Cologne train required a reservation and was already full. Thus, to get to Cologne by the evening, I had to make an extra train connection which added 1.5 hours to my travel time. Although time-consuming, the train rides were very comfortable and spending a little extra time passing through Belgian and German towns wasn't a big deal, although I was grateful for the iPad.

I got into Cologne at just about midnight, stopped at the first sausage cart (which was quite busy), and promptly scarfed down an excellent currywurst. I've got about half a day in Cologne, then it's off to Berlin!

Danke, sausage cart lady!