Bruges

            Today we went to the Belgian town of Bruges, which about an hour north of Lille up near Belgium's northwestern border with The Netherlands. It's a beautiful, midieval town. We left around one this afternoon. I had a rather sluggish start to the day since we had no classes today, so I didn't really do anything before we left. When we got there, we took a boat tour of the town because it has a lot of canals. Like Amsterdam and other northern European cities with significant canal systems, it is often thought of as the Venice of the North. When we finished the tour, we only had a couple of hours there because we had to leave around 6. So we only had a very short time period to do what we wanted to do. I went with a small group with five other people in the group to walk around the city. The things we wanted to check out were Belgian Waffles, Belgian Chocolate, Belgian Beer, and Belgian Fries (because apparently Belgium is known for its "French" Fries). We got everything but the Beer in the time we had. I had a Belgium Waffle with melted Belgian Chocolate on it (the calories of that is unimaginable, but it was necessary). We found this really fancy, yet inexpensive chocolate store before getting the waffles. It was surprising how good but cheap the chocolate was. I got a large box of an assortment of the various types. For the fries, we went to this little street vendor near the main market. The fries look just like American fries, but are significantly better. We also had time to quickly check out two churches while there. As usual, I really like the churches. But, unfortunately, we had to leave at six. It was a nice introduction to the city and Flanders though. Now I'm back at the dorm relaxing for a while.

Some photos: