Bruges, Belgium

the pictures i took in bruges are in the post right below this one. i didn't have time to write anything, so i'll go ahead and do that now. luke visited for a week, and although i put him through pain and misery and caused him to lose some money, i think he hopefully had a good time? pain and misery = giving him bad directions and he wandered leuven for around 4 hours in the rain and dark. lose some money = the people were lame at ryanair and didn't let him board his original plane, so he had to rebook for the next day which cost him another ticket. which isn't my fault, but the bad directions bit was my fault for sure. still feel bad about that one. we didn't plan ahead...at all. but anyways, he just hung out here and we did usual business as i was going to class and feeling a little under the weather. then, on thursday, we went to bruges. we took a train sometime in the afternoon and arrived in the little town. we are both fans of the movie, so that's basically why we wanted to go. it's a nice little place. we both agreed that it would be a nice romantic getaway for two kind of place, like a honeymoon deal. because there are lots of nice little scenic spots and fancy little restaurants (expensive, too). so we wandered around the town, taking pictures whenever the spot looked worthy, and ended up walking all the way across town. small place. in a very hungry, despairing attempt to find cheap and filling food, we ate at pizza hut. so what. it was satisfying. then we found our hostel, which was pretty sweet. it included a bar and restaurant. we put our stuff away, hung out at the bar for a little bit, then explored a bit more. saw some of the same stuff we saw earlier but at night time with pretty lights and whatnot. found a very hidden little beer restaurant bar-ish kind of place called de garre that had their own beer, and you can only get it in that place. neat. finally got back to the room and went to bed. next day, free breakfast at the hostel, went and saw more sights. best sights: going to the top of the belfry tower. awesome. and also going to bruges' last brewery for a tour and a free beer. the tour wasn't amazing but it was a cool little place, and the beer was good. so was the beer and cheese soup. probably not the same as you would guess, it was different than i expected, but it might have been the best soup i've ever tasted. then we walked around seeing if we missed anything (which i don't think we really did), then hit the train back to leuven.

saturday we had a brief trip to brussels which involved wandering around, seeing some sights, visiting delirium cafe for a little bit, getting a delicious belgian waffle, then hitting the train back here.

sunday we were lazy except for a long walk into leuven, seeing a new place i had never seen that is a little park, pond/lake, and a nice little abbey. very serene and nice.