On Wednesday morning, we woke up around 9 a.m. to an empty apartment;
Sander left for work earlier but is quick and quiet like a ninja, so we slept through his morning routine. I felt bad for him momentarily, because he only had maybe five hours of sleep, but then I took my first real shower in Europe (since the one the morning before in the hostel did not quite count) and it was amazing, and my thoughts quickly turned to how awesome and human I felt.
Once ready, we headed out, and our destination was the train station. We stopped along the way for breakfast (apple and banana tarts) and then continued on.
Of course, instead of making our way through the streets to it the fastest and most normal way, we picked the decidedly more complicated route, although I did not realize that until far later. The cool part of our detour was that just around the corner from Sander's apartment is an elevator. This is by far the most bizarre looking site I can think of to be in the middle of a big city.
We took said elevator up and ended up on a street we could not quite locate on the map (this would be the standard story of course time spent in Brussels, quite honestly) and so we asked for directions from various people until eventually someone spoke enough English to tell us what to do, so we caught a train which dropped us off just around the corner from the
Central station.
After waiting in line forever (as we have the tendency here in Europe to pick the longest and slowest lines ever) we picked up tickets for the following day's journey to Paris, and purchased round-trip tickets for our day excursion to Bruges. Then we had to catch a train, and by this time, it was around noon, so we had only 10 or so minutes to wait.
But of course... something had to happen (the prior days' awful waffle experience was not enough!). As our train was approaching, we stood up and walked toward the platform to board, and an incredibly eager businessman did the same. Once the doors (which we were directly in front of) opened, said businessman pushed his way through, knocking Elia's hand and causing her ticket to fall below the train. Immediately after, he stopped and looked at her, said nothing, and continued on his way.
We found our seats and quickly began brainstorming the best idea. Should we put our trip on hold and go back to the station and explain the situation? Should we simply find someone and explain the situation? Should we just ignore it and hope for the best, as it seems every other train we took had no one checking tickets? We decided to be honest and go with option B, which ended up being the most costly one, perhaps.
We made our way through the various train cars in search of a conductor of some sort, until we found two employees and explained our situation. The female appeared to be understanding, until she demanded that Elia pay 25,80 Euro, the price of the roundtrip ticket we had purchased just minutes before. We tried to protest and argue but there was no budging it seemed, so Elia paid it. The male working was a bit more sympathetic and gave us information on how to go about getting a refund, which may never actually happen.
In no time at all, we arrived in Bruges, and made our way outside. There did not appear to be any kind of downtown area outside the train station, so we ended up following a group of people in the direction they were headed, which proved to be the correct decision.
But first! We stopped for a waffle in the train station, which could have ended up either way. It was only 2 Euros (as opposed to 6-8 Euros for the same thing in Brussels) and it was quite possibly the most delicious waffle I have ever had... no joke.
We spent the next hour wandering the streets, taking pictures, admiring the buildings, and eventually settling down for lunch. Afterward, we tossed around a few ideas of what to do, and decided to go on yet another boat tour, figuring that would be the best way to see the city in the shortest amount of time.
The boat ride was pretty cool (our guide did the whole thing in flawess French, English AND German) and we learned a lot of cool little facts about the city (which famous people lived there, the buildings used in the film "
In Bruges", the city's window tax of the past, which buildings were built with a slant, and more). The houses in Bruges arenät along a road by the river/canals like in Amsterdam, but rather right on the water, which adds to the overall charms of the place.
After our 30-minute boat ride, I really wanted to check out the
Basilica of the Holy Blood, but we ended up cutting it pretty close if I wanted to check out the saxophones at the
Musical Instrument Museum in Brussels, so we had to skip on that in order to catch the correct train. Instead, we stopped for another waffle (with caramel, not quite as good) and then headed back to the train station.
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