In Bruges..

So we are now in Bruges, Belgium. You may have heard of this little place from the movie In Bruges. If you have seen this movie let me tell you that our experience here has been just slighlty different.

We arrived here the day before yesterday and are leaving tomorrow. When we first arrived we just took our time walking around the city, got some chocolate, drank a bunch of Leffe and Raspberry beer. The first day I arrived starving and asked a hostel employee where I could get some cheap food- he sent me in the direction of a near butcher. We went and got some food and since then we have returned to our butcher everyday for soup and yummy little dishes. Yesterday we sat with him as he heated up our food and he started giving us samples of super expensive hams. He gave us the thinnest sliver that was worth about 2 Euro. This ham was around 260 euro a kg! Worse than that it was almost all fat and pretty icky but we smiled, held up our fatty meat, cheersed our best butcher friend and swallowed without chewing. Later the first night Kylene was feeling healthy and went for a run while Lynds and I were feeling sober and retired to the bar, played cards and drank Leffe, red wine, and yummy raspberry beer. In the bar we were seated by this tank of an old woman who appeared to be really offended by our card shuffling. When we had first arrived at the hostel around 1:30 pm she was there alone with her beer and then when we came back at 8:00 pm or so she was still in the same spot just people watching. For the short while we spent in the pub we saw her get up and come back at least four times with a huge mug of beer. This old woman totally put me to shame. When we went back yesterday she was there again, but this time with a noticably younger man on her arm. There are things to learn from old Belgin women.

Day two we spent on bicycles since everyone here rides one. We got yelled at a lot in Flemish for not quite understanding the bike rules but since we didn't understand a word it didn't bother us much. We just got lost for a few hours to see all the different parts of this pretty little city, visited our butcher friend and came back to get changed for a fun-filled Tuesday night. Up until then we basically had this 8 bedroom mixed dorm all to ourselves, up until then we have basically had all of our dorms to ourselves, so getting changed in the open has never been an issue for us. Or since I sleep talk a lot, exclaiming "I'm in my panties!!" in the middle of the night is more funny than embarassing. This is why when Kylene was changing her pants and I was lounging in my bed we were caught a little off guard, and in Ky's case-literally with her pants down- when three Welsh boys walked into our room. They were very respectful and shuffled back out when they realized what was happening. I just started laughing but the best reaction was definitly Kylene's, and that was no reaction at all. She didn't even flinch. She looked up, laughed to herself, put on her pants and called them back in. It was beautiful.
When the boys came back in we chatted with them for a bit and said we'd all meet up in the bar later. Armed with a deck of cards we all crammed into a booth and played Cheat for a bit. There were three of them: Dan 1, Dan 2 and Doug. We decided to change bars after a bit,and since Bruges isn't quite bumping on a Tuesday night we wondered until we eventually ended up at a different hostel's bar for some pool. Pool was fun, we each teamed with one of the guys to beat each other but I don't even remember sinking one ball all night. It was more the guys playing against each other but slower than usual because they had to wait a turn for us to hit the white ball randomly around the table. I was regularly distracted by this motorcycle in the room that we now have like 100 pictures pretending to ride. At around 4 am we finally and noisily got into bed and annoyed the one other person in our dorm. One special accomplishment of the night was finally getting Lynsdey properly drunk for basically the first time this whole trip. It was good, innocent fun had by... well us at least. The guys went to Amsterdam today to pave the way.
Right now the three of us are basically the walking dead. We have really been go, go, go since we arrived and yesterday just did me in. I could happily sleep for a good 24 hours straight but the insomniac Kylene likes to be productive. Plus, we needed to visit the Butcher. Now we are trying to find a way to Amsterdam tomorrow and we are growing a little freaked out because it's looking like it's going to be the most expensive stop yet. Hostel prices for weekend dates are high. But it must be done I suppose and I hope to have lots to blog about by the end of our stay! Until next time!

P.S - mind the spelling or if things look a little off. The keyboard here is very different and my brain is taking the day off :)