Day 10
Okay, I'm pretty sure that it's day ten... anyway, now everything's going to be arbitrarily so many days away from today, which is now "Day 10" of my trip... even if it isn't. What is reality, anyway...? D:
Last night, I saw a wild rat for the first time. I was walking back to my dorm, searching in my purse for my keys (and, incidentally, thinking that my wallet had been stolen for all of five seconds before realizing that I was holding it in my other hand), and I saw a flicker of movement out of the corner of my eye. I looked, and I saw a rat dissapearing underneathe a bridge. D: I was kind of creeped out, but I suppose that it's normal for a large city to have vermin inhabitants as well...?
Back to more pleasant subjects... Brugge was awesome. :3 As I mentioned in my last post, it's "the Venice of the North", and it really is a gorgeous city. Unfortunately, I woke up this morning and opened the window to look out upon torrential rain. D: It actually wasn't too bad in Belgium, alternating as it was between "tsunami"-like train and clear skies, then back again, sometimes all within fifteen minutes.
The city itself was about one hour's bus ride away from Lille. The bus was late getting there, but we still had to leave on time, so we ended up only having about two and a half hours in Brugge, nearly 45 minutes of which was taken up by a boat tour... which was nearly pointless, as we were all huddling underneathe our umbrellas and as a result hardly saw anything. (We did discover that Brugge has extremely low bridges. One of them had litterally less than a meter of clearance. Cool.) So... that left us with less than two hours of time to explore this beautiful city.
That was very mean. Seriously, I would have been quite happy with a week to explore. Two hours is just teasing - "Here is the awesomeness that is Brugge! Look around, see the sights! ... but make sure you're back at the clocktower right away, or you'll miss the bus and be stranded!" I didn't get to go up to see the view from the famous clocktower, I didn't get to go see Michelangelo's Mary, didn't get to go find some nice lace (Brugge is famous for it's lace, as is much of Belgium), didn't find that one scarf shop that several people reccomended, hardly glanced into any shops... D: I was there for just long enough to see how much I was missing.
On the plus side, Yan and I have decided that one of our weekend trips will now be to Brugge. We need more time there.
I'm not saying that my trip today was a waste. It was awesome (I have like 400 photographs of various sights, mostly Flemish roofs). I did manage to buy some Belgian chocolates, which I shall eat pretty soon (we're going to Brussels in a few weeks, so don't worry, my dearest family, I shall return with some Belgian chocolates from there for you!), some really nice specialty tea from an awesome tea shop, and at least 8 post cards (one of them is shaped like a waffle! and another like a box of chocolates!). So yes, I am determined to return to Brugges.
Also, we're still planning on what to do this weekend. We're hoping for Amsterdam, and we've been looking at train tickets and hostels online... but nothing's been finalized. I really must get on that...
I must now sleep. I am quite tired...