Today marked our first full day together. We woke up early in an attempt to get a jump start on the day, however the girls have a dirty little addiction to caffeine and needed some badly! Poor Danielle was still fresh off the boat..or should I say plane?Unfortunately, 'To Go' coffee is not a notion that exist in Europe. The traditions of coffee consumption are rooted deeply into Europeans' veins and their way of life. Coffee is to be enjoyed, not consumed through a plastic syphon whilst strolling around town. This does not make for a happy start but an interesting one ;) In the words of my dearest friend Danielle, "What the heck do NO Europeans drink coffee and walk, we have places to go and people to see and don’t have time to just lallygag every time we want to have a coffee haha."With caffeine streaming through their veins, we were off! Brugge and our clothing wasn't what you would call a match. It was pouring and none of us really had any rain gear with us. This prompted a quick stop into the local tchotchke shop and the purchase of some oh so elegant ponchos!
Rain drenched and laughing we wondered into one of the cafes in the main square. With our second coffee shop of the day underway we planned the rest of our adventure. As the rain let up, only slightly, we took a quick walk around the square and walked into a beautiful cathedral, Sint-Salvatorskerkhof, for some dry time. 
From there we waddled our way back to the car and headed to Oostende which is a small seaside town west of Brugge on the North Sea. Like any respectable European town there was a gigantic church in the middle of this small fishing village. However, we foregoed more sanctuaries for the real treat of the day; a walk on the boardwalk, picking and choosing fresh seafood from the local vendors.
After lunch we headed back towards Brussels and stopped halfway in a town called Ghent. This medieval canal city was the largest city outside of Paris during it's heyday and therefore had some pretty gorgeous old buildings and architecture to meander through. We made it to the central markt (square in Flemish) and went to a recommended and delicious Biergarten, Het Waterhuis Aan De Bierkant, located right on the river. There we enjoyed the next hour relaxing, soaking up the sun and sipping on the exclusively brewed beer for the pub; Gandavum.
Once we finally snapped out of our daze, it was back to Brussels for one more night and one last dinner in Belgium. Unfortunately, sometimes when you're in a new place and you rely to heavily on technology, you end up getting lost for 45 minutes within a 1 mile radius of your hotel. That being said, we parked the car and used our feet and our heads and got to a cute restaurant about 10 minutes later to enjoy a nice meal and plan some more of our adventure.
After dinner we headed back to our hotel for one final slumber and after getting quiet comfortable, we realized that our retractable reading lights made for the absolute most perfect nighttime shadow puppet show special! This extravagant display of maturity ended abruptly at about 2am when a hotel personelle had to come knocking on the door because we were laughing so hard. With tears in our eyes and smiles on our faces we finally called it a night. On to Holland tomorrow!!
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