Day 5

Hello from Bruges!!! That is where I am currently residing. But the journey to get here is a much more exciting story to tell. We began our day at 5 am! We walked the mile to the train station and left for Maastricht at 5:57. We had two transfers, and one included a bus to Maastricht from Vise (pronounced vis-a, not vice, like I was mistakenly saying it). The sky was somewhat dreary, but we could see some blue peeking through. We walked across the main bridge and into the city and found the main town square, which was completely empty. We saw a few of the churches, but nothing too impressive. After walking around for a bit, we found the Hellpoort and Jerker Towers, which were remains from the old city walls. Those were pretty cool and there was a nice view of the river that ran through the city. Even though it was a little early for lunch, we stopped anyways at one of my favorite food establishments, McDonalds. It wasn’t expensive and it was a little taste of home. After hoppi9ng back on the bus and waiting 53 minutes in Vise, we were on our way to Dinant. What used to be an 11 minutes layover in Liege (pronounced Lee-age and not Leege) turned into a 2 minutes layover when our train was late. Luckily our legs weren’t too tired and we were able to run to the next stop. After one more 30 minutes layover, we were finally in Dinant. And I think that this has to be my favorite stop so far. For the last 4 months or so, Dinant has been my desktop background, so it was amazing to see it up close and personal. Now I have another picture of Dinant as my background, but it was one that I took. Our first stop there was the Grotte Marveliouse (I think that’s how you spell it) which translates to the Marvelous Caves. And were they ever. We ascended over 100 meters into the earth and saw these caves that were formed by rivers thousands of years ago. The truly were marvelous. And our guide was very interesting as well and gave the tour in 3 different languages, French, English, and Dutch. I guess that’s common over in Belgium to speak those three languages. It’s very useful for me. After exiting the caves, we headed back into the city and set forth to climb to the top of the Dinant fortress. Now, mind you, this was not the easiest task. It is exactly 408 steps to the top and they aren’t normal sized steps, but very tall steps. It felt like 1,000. After almost dying halfway up, I thought there was no hope. But thankfully, I made it and the view was well worth the price that my legs had to pay. After spending some time up there we opted for the easier route down and took the cable car. I liked that option much better. The rest of our time was spent in the city trying to locate a food source. Now, I didn’t mention it a few days ago, but while I was in Brussels, I had some traditional Belgian food, a Bicky and Frites which, in the picture, looked like burgers and fries. I was very wrong. The fries were normal, but a bicky is most definitely NOT a hamburger. Instead it is some foreign meat shaped to look like a hamburger. Added to that was carrots, cabbage, cheese and possibly onion. So when I saw the sign for 2.00 euro Bicky’s, I quickly passed on that. Hoping that we would find food in Bruges, we hopped back on the train. Now, we had left our bags in our Hostel to avoid paying a luggage storage fee at the train station. We had 35 minutes to walk to our hostel, pick up our bags, and walk back to the train station. Sounds doable? Well, the distance to the hostel is approximately 1 mile. And with a 30 pound backpack, that was a very difficult task. After nearly running back to the train station, we found out that it was running 8 minutes late. That would have been nice to know beforehand. At least the ride to Bruges was quick. But sadly, we had to walk another mile to our hostel once there. At least there was no time constraint. Once we had arrived and checked in, I was STARVING. (I’m putting that in caps because I ate a McDonald’s hamburger at 10 am). But sadly, Bruges shuts down at 7 pm so there was no luck for me. Oh well, Cheese-itz and Beef Jerky would have to do. All in all, it was a great day and I’m so excited for tomorrow!!!