This weekend Celina and I decided to go to Belgium- there was a beer festival in Brugge and we thought we'd just stay the weekend. There were no places to stay the night in Brugge, so we decided to go to Ghent after the festival to stay the night and then explore that city the next day.
So, we caught our train at 9am on Saturday, and just had one simple transfer and bam we were there. We were going to meet up with some friends who were coming to The festival just for the day then returning to Lille, but we decided to eat first since we were very hungry. Shopping distracted us for a bit- it's surprising how different the shopping is just an hour or two away- but it was SO good! I bought probably the cutest dress I now own for 7€. Then we walked around the downtown area and got a waffle. YUM. I got a chocolate one with whipped cream and oh man. It was so good. They give you a tiny plastic fork to eat it with, but there was no way that would help us, so we his in a corner and enjoyed our waffles like savages. Turns out we were actually hiding behind the mayor's house haha. Oops. But it was worth it. We went into a hotel to wash our faces and bodies- there was no way we could've eaten those waffles cleanly. We explored some more, and we got some chocolate from Rick Steve's favorite store (they even had his Christmas card). Then we decided to go meet our friends at the festival. The way the event worked was that you got a glass to try all the beers with (then you got to take it home) and you bought tokens depending on how many beers you wanted. We started walking around, and tried one- it was so good! I can't remember any names, I was just enjoying the atmosphere haha. We finally found our friends and hung with them for a while, then we took a stroll downtown all together and grabbed some snacks. I got fries- not insanely different from what I'm used to, maybe a different Belgium city is known for its fries. Then our group kinda split apart- Celina and Peter (from Hungary) and I explored some more while the rest of the gang went back to the festival. We went into a cute chapel, walked a lot, found a church that was turned into a community center, and found the holy blood of Jesus. Pretty good if you ask me. I didn't know about the holy blood, and I wish I had a picture, but that was pretty cool. Then we went back to the festival and I got a sweet beer and that hit the spot. Then we hung out for a while at the festival and just chatted. It was nice. There were food stands there so I used one of my tokens to get an ice cream cone and that was great. We finished off with one more random beer and said goodbye to our friends who were going back to Lille. Celina and I went back downtown for dinner at a very nice restaurant- she got a local dish and I got mussels, which I guess was also local. We got soup and salad and chocolate mousse to finish, all for under 20€. It was SO delicious. We enjoyed chatting for a while and then headed out to the train station to go to Ghent. It turned out that the train didn't leave for at least another hour, so we were definitely going to miss the checkin time for the hostel. We met some interesting people and finally made it haha. Thankfully we took a taxi to the hostel because I don't think we could've done more walking. We had trouble getting in, but the worker stayed late and let us in and didn't charge us extra for being two hours late. He was super super nice. We went up stairs, made our beds, and crashed. The hostel was extremely nice, even though we were in the 10 person bedroom. We ate a very good and filling breakfast in the morning (included) and packed up and headed out. We were in search of Mass, and finally found a church that was being used as a church. I think it was under renovation because only a portion was being used, and the rest of it was a market... Kinda weird and reminded me of Jesus throwing tables in front of the temple because people were selling things, but as far as I knew no thievery was going on so that's good. Everyone was so old at Mass, again, nothing like Lille's participation. The guy singing literally looked like Santa Claus, and we could not understand a word of Flemish. But it was good and cool to hear the language so much. Throughout the whole trip it was very weird to speak English to strangers and not understand people's conversations. After Mass we walked around downtown and went up the Belfry, a big bell tower with a lot of history. We got a great view of the city, Ghent is actually pretty big. Then we walked around some more and shopped and watched a street performer. We were then again in search of food- finding nothing under 20€, we went back to the area where we went to Mass to a restaurant that was having an all you can eat rib lunch. Why not? Apparently it's a famous restaurant, and it wasn't half bad. Not KC but definitely good and very cool. We hung out there for a while, not knowing what all to do until our 9pm car, so when they were getting ready to close for the afternoon we walked around some more in a different part of the city, after getting some chocolate :) we saw a castle with a moat and many cute little shops. It started to rain and get dark, so we decided to walk around a bit more in search of a cafe or bar along our tram route. We got to a bar in a nice part of town, and got tea and hot chocolate. We talked to the bar tender for an hour or two, he was super friendly and nice and very interesting. He loves bartending and offered to make us some drinks. It was so good! While he was making them, I got a call from our driver saying that he'd be early and was wondering if we could meet him earlier. I said that would be fine, but that meant we had to drink pretty quickly. We went outside to try and catch the tram, but couldn't figure it out- there was zero English. So we decided to run. Not our best idea as we ended up on a highway and then my phone died, but we eventually made it and the driver was so so nice to wait so long for us. We had a nice ride home, and finally made it back home and into my bed, I have no idea how we did it alive. I slept in the next day and failed to do any homework, but went shopping instead and got some stuff (clothes) for our trip to Greece on Tuesday :) turns out it's a lot harder than you think to pack for a 10 day trip, even in a travel backpack, and us girls were up until 2am packing. BUT finally we got to sleep and woke up a few hours later to catch our bus to the airport in Charleroi, Belgium. Super nice Kansas City-sized airport, and Ryan air didn't turn out that bad. Updates to come on Greece :)