Blundering through Belgium and kissing frogs

Day 5 - Wednesday 29th April

Wednesday morning Amy and I packed up our bags again and said 'doei' (bye in Dutch) to Amsterdam. Well after we'd had some more pancakes from All Stars anyway.

The three hour train journey to Brussels flew by as I spent most of it reading 'The Miniaturist', which is set in 17th century Amsterdam, ' on my Kindle.

We managed to find our hostel without too much hastle and were surprised at how big our room was. The hostel itself looks like an old school.

Some artwork at the hostel.

Next we went out to explore Brussels and to find some food. We ate in an Italian restaurant, where I had some very good ravioli. Afterwards we had a wander round the chocolate shops (basically heaven) and found Manneken Pis. Nearby was a square with some impressive buildings, so we snapped up a few pictures and of course a selfie or two. We also discovered that Brussels is very confusing (to us at least). I don't think we ever went back to our hostel the same way twice.

Tiger with some Belgium chocolate.

Day 6 - Thursday 30th April

Thursday was supposed to get off to an early start, however I accidentally set our alarm for the wrong day. Luckily we woke up in time to go down for breakfast.

Next we got the Metro over to Mini-Europe, which has miniature versions of the famous buildings and attractions from each European country. It was really impressive the amount of time, money, and detail that goes into each model.

We then made our way back to the hostel to have some lunch and plan out what we were going to do after Paris. We found out that our original plan wasn't such a good idea because of too many train changes. After a bit of stress we finally came to a decision about what to do and where to go. We decided to go straight to Switzerland instead of going to the other places in France, which means we've got some extra travel days and time to play with.

At this point we desperately needed to get out of our hostel room, so we went for a walk in search of waffles, chips and ice-cream. After sitting down with our food, I stood up and managed to catch the back of my boot on the step I was sitting on, breaking my boot. It's not too noticeable but I really hope it doesn't rain before I get a new pair. (Update - it rained the whole time we were in Paris but my boot was fine and my feet were dry)

By now it was starting to get late but it was still really light, so we decided to find a comic book wall. Brussels is home to the creators of the Smurfs and Tin Tin, amongst other popular cartoons. We'd already seen a few painted walls but this one was supposed to be the best. We ended up walking around, and getting a bit lost. By the time we worked out we were nearly there it was getting dark and seemed like we were in a dodgy area, so we headed back to our hostel. Eventually we found our way back. At least we ended up seeing a fair amount of Brussels during our short stay!

Day 7 - Friday 1st May

Luckily today wasn't as eventful as yesterday. We got up early for breakfast, booked our accommodation for Interlaken in Switzerland, packed up our bags and checked out of the hostel. We got the train to Bruges and spent the day there.

Bruges is my kind of place. It was really pretty and full of cobblestones, greenery and old buildings. We followed the canal round to the old windmills, then went down a lovely street to the centre. We had a little wander, took some pictures, brought some souvenirs and kissed a stone frog (this was something we heard from a travel guide but maybe they were having us on). Next we tried to find a comic book shop from the map, however it wasn't there anymore. But we did find a beautiful churchyard full of daffodils just around the corner.

After we got back to Brussels we walked round a small labyrinth of trees and shrubbery before grabbing our backpacks and heading back to the train station to get the train to Paris.

J :)