Today is Thursday, and we have been here in Bruges for several wonderful days. To begin with, our trip from Hartford to Chicago and from Chicago to Brussels was perfect in every way except one. Although Ron managed to get a few hours sleep on the plane, I closed my eyes but couldn’t sleep. As a result, when we ended our 12 hour journey, I was more than a little sleepy.
It was only 11 o’clock when we got to Bruges, and our room wasn’t ready, so we left the huge pile of luggage there and walked around the neighborhood of the hotel. It was just the right neighborhood--between the two huge market squares that make up the center of the old city. We ate wonderful Belgian waffles and looked at the beautiful, northern Renaissance buildings, the shops full of lace and chocolate and had a lovely couple of hours. Then we went to the hotel and went to sleep for a couple of hours.
After a few phone calls, we found that our camper had arrived and could be picked up whenever we wanted. Armed with this information, we told the hotel keeper that we wouldn’t need the room tomorrow and went out walking again. We had dinner at a very nice little restaurant down the street. It was full of people – all of whom, except for us, seemed to be Brits. We were sitting next to two couples from Birmingham, and we enjoyed a long conversation with them. All of them disliked GW immensely, especially his plans to attack Iraq. Then we went back to the hotel to go to bed. I believe that I was asleep before my head touched a pillow.
We slept late – which is certainly not our usual! We barely made the 8-10 am breakfast in the hotel! Called a cab, dreading the repeat performance of the luggage into the train station to go to Zeebrugge. Fortunately, in the conversation with the driver, we discovered that he could take us right to the dock for $35 Euros (about $30). Was that ever the right decision! So we got to the right dock (finally) and they found our RV. We were there for four hours! First they had to find it, then there was paper work, then there was a minor problem, then there was lunch, and no drivers could be found to bring it to us. Finally we were pleased to see it appear, and all was really quite well. No damage. Nothing stolen. We unpacked a bit and started off for Brugges and the campground. Only got lost once or twice and found it quickly. It helped that Zeebrugge is only about 12 kilometers (9 miles) from Brugges, and that Brugges itself is pretty small.
