Our first stop was Cologne, one of my favorite cities in Europe. My mom was impressed with the cathedral but wasn't in the mood for any of the old Roman artifacts. Cologne was an important city in Roman times and there are still a bunch of cool old walls and roads right in the middle of town. We didn't spend a lot of time dawdling and after hiking to the top of the Dom's south spire we continued east into Belgium.
We got to Bruges around 4 PM and it was teeming with tourists. The town is really "cute" as my mom would say thousands of times over the next 24 hours. I do recommend coming here with a lady friend. Mom and I checked in to our hotel then rented bikes and tried to get away from the craziness of the city center. We spent the last hours of daylight bouncing on along on the cobblestones of a very quaint town and eventually returned to the city center once things died down. We didn't get many good pictures of the Bruges town center but you just have to believe me when I say the charm was through the roof.
On Wednesday morning, mom and I took off on our bikes for the coast. It was an overcast day and the ride through Belgian farmland was quite pleasant. Our bikes were horrible but I only complained about mine 75429731042720 times. The seaside reminded me of Normandy and it was pretty cold so we didn't linger for long. The ride back to Bruges was good but toward the end I really started to get sore. All told we rode about 40 Km which is about 25 miles. This weekend my brother will be running 26.2 miles in the Paris marathon. I can't even fathom the ridiculousness of that. Anyway, once we got back to town we returned the bikes and drove to the Bruges Brewery. They have a dark beer called Zot that my mom liked a lot and we bought some glasses as souvenirs. I almost bought a shirt that said "I'm Zot(Mad) About You" but the "Mad" in parentheses angered me. Again, I limited myself to a single beer so that I could drive and we made it to Ghent around 3 or 4 PM.
I liked Ghent even more than Bruges. Ghent has about 90% of the charm that Bruges has but only 10% of the tourists. The first thing we did after check-in was go to the top of the belfry for a city view.
Ghent also seemed like a nice town to party in but I never really found out. The closest I came to the party was sitting outside of the gay bar, The Out, and using their free wi-fi. The bar had a steady flow of patrons and looked like it would be a lot of fun if one were so inclined. Anyway, here are more Ghent pictures:
On Thursday we had to drive back to Wiesbaden but Cliff was working until 7 PM so we had plenty of time. I found out that the Hoegaarden brewery was only a 30 minute detour so we obviously headed there for lunch. The smoked salmon salad was delicious, as was the glass of white beer. I like Hoegaarden a lot and bought myself some of their paraphernalia including a sweet beer tie. The drive home was uneventful and my mom snoring kept me from falling asleep.
This morning I picked up Cliff's friend Julia from the airport and we went on two different walks. It got up to 80 degrees here in Wiesbaden and beer gardens seemed to spring up anywhere and everywhere there was open space. We drank a few Erdingers, not the best beer in Germany, and now Julia is passed out. We're all sitting around waiting for Cliff to get off of work so that we can drive to Paris. I think the marathon is on Sunday so tomorrow we'll do something low-key like drink 3 or 4 bottles of red wine. Peace.
P.S. BONUS PICTURE! They're just called "sprouts" in Brussels.
