And Now....The Rest of the Story

So, we ended up catching the bus from Calais, France to Dunkurque, France and slowly continued north towards Bruges. It took a bit of work to find a bus from there into Belgium as it was getting late but a helpful man at the bus stop helped us out and we got a bus to Adinkerque (not quite Bruges, but in Belgium). When we arrived at the bus stop there was a train waiting, which we promptly boarded as it was the last train from that station heading towards Brujes. A group of young Belgian travelers were on the train and they gave us some tips, mostly about Belgian beer and fries, for our travels. So far people in the Dutch speaking countries have been some of the most helpful and friendly people on our travels. They are very cool people in general, A #1 in My book. The attendant told us we would have to make a transfer and that we would have to make the next train as it was the last one to Bruges. We hit the ground running and made the train with minutes to spare. After a short ride we arrived in Bruges, but we still had to figure out a bus to get to the center of the city. Luckily, a bus drive saw us sitting there and helped us out and got us to the central plaza and gave us directions to the hostel. We got a room and some fries and a bratwurst, they were really good. (apparently fries were invented in Belgium, but the name French Fries stuck as British and American soldiers during the first World War remembered them as French Fries as French was the official language of the Belgian Army). We spent the next day riding bikes around the city, complete with little bell ringers and all. It was great! A lot, I mean a lot , of people ride bikes around the city, which consists of narrow, cobblestone roads that twist between the buildings. At night you will see lines of bikes parked in front of the bars. We also did a brewery tour of a local brewery and then spent the night with a deck of cards and a couple beers in the hostel lobby. Another side note about the hostel. The guy who was working the front desk and bar spoke to us in English, the locals in Dutch, Spanish to the Spaniards, Italian to the Italians, and we heard him speaking French on the phone...pretty impressive! Overall, Bruges was a great city. We then decided to head into the Netherlands. A few bus rides and train rides, some on the wrong direction, and we made it to our hostel in the coastal city of Noordwijk. We spent a few days here and just relaxed. The staff was great and since it was the off season it was hard to determine who worked there and who didn't. It was like that house in high school that everyone shows up at to just hang out, nobody is really doing anything but just hanging out. One of the workers had a friend that was going to watch the Super Bowl and invited us to go. Crazy thing is that the game started at midnight out here, and we couldn't catch a bus home til 7 the next morning. It was a lot of fun and we ended up meeting some great people from England, Holland, and Poland. The bartender let everyone stay til 7 am and then we all went home to sleep. Good times. From there we took the free hostel shuttle into Amsterdam. Funny thing was that there was a group of six of us waiting to go and the shuttle driver was still sleeping. Best part is that the manager said, "Well, let me see if I can wake her up, but she's gonna need some coffee first, so it will be a little bit". Funny group working there! She got us into the city and left us with these wonderful words of wisdom, "If some guy comes up to you on the street and offers you cocaine, don't buy it...you'll get ripped off". That had us laughing pretty good. Another really cool thing was that the shuttle had a Zebra Junction CD in the stereo, which is a band that used to be a neighbor in Littleton...small world. We stayed a few nights in Amsterdam and saw the Anne Frank House. We got some fresh snow while we were there, it was really cold in the Nerherlands. Overall, Amsterdam is okay as a city. It's kind of like Las Vegas in that it is a party city and kind of dirty like a major industrial city. It was cool to see but wasediocre overall, at least for us...of course I think it would be very different in summer. Again, like Belgium, there were a lot of bikes. When you leave the central station there are literally thosands of bikes parked on giant terraced parking structures, it's pretty cool to see. I think something like 55% of all transportation in Amsterdam is by bike and 85% of the population in the Netherlands owns a bike, and uses it at some point. After a few days it was time to move on to somewhere a little more quiet and we found a hikers cabin at a campground and we hunkered down for four days and just relaxed. We got more snow but we didn't have anywhere to be so it was just fine. We met a German that was going to drive a 70's fire truck from Germany to India this summer. Freaking awesome! We decided that we should head south towards the Mediterranean to catch some warm weather. We have heard great things about morocco so we think that is where we will head. First stop on this journey was Paris. I was less than enthusiastic about this one.... it's France with their over protective language and always looking down on the non-French vagabonds....but now I must admit that Paris is a guilty pleasure and I hold no animosity towards the French, but rather I found them to be fairly nice. It kind of sucks when traveling and experiences force you to lose stereotypes that you enjoy...I mean the French are am easy target, right? While the lodging is expensive in Paris, the variety and affordability of food was great. That said, we still weren't eating in sit down style restaurants, but small vendors and stores offered fresh, filling meals that were great! The bread was excellent and every morning the bakeries, butchers, fruit stands etc would open into narrow streets. It was a really great sight. We got to see the Eiffel Tower, the Arc of Triumph (which is surrounded by the world's largesttraffic circle... it is absolute chaos to the casual observer and has enough room for at least ten lanes of traffic, all rnterin from 8 separate, major roads), famous graves like Jim Morrison and Chopin and a whole gambit of good things. From there we decided that we wanted to visit the D- Day beaches in Normandy. This where we are now, in the town of Caen, south of the beaches. Tomorrow we are going to walk the beaches and memorials. Looking forward to this experience. Well, for now that is the summary... next stop is Spain to meet up with our friends Dori and Nerea! Until the next post! Team Lowry