221!

so saturday was day 221! at this point i was in Bruges with three other girls. two belgians from (sort of) my class, and another exchange student. i think its cool that i can say one of my first girls-weekend type of activities was in belgium to BRUGES! impressive. oh, you don't know much about Bruges you say? Well, its located in the northwest part of the country and i must say its a pretty big journey by train. if you're lucky you can do it with two trains and it takes a couple hours but if you're anything like we were today then it takes almost 4 hours and 3 trains (bruges to brussels, brussels to antwerp, antwerp to turnhout) to get there. oh well! i like trains. so Bruges-its the capital of the province of west flanders.. and it's commonly known (but not really amongst belgians) as the "venice of the north" because of its canals. sooo naturally, the first thing we did saturday morning after eating our free hostel breakfast was...

a boat tour!

and so here are a few pictures from the boat!

see how the tree's are already blooming for the spring..

after that we went to a couple churches. one that had this little vessel that apparently contained the blood of Jesus or something. we also saw the city hall, the bell tower, the market, and the coolest thing in my opinion was the "madonna and child" sculpture inside the big important "our ladys church" in bruges by michaelangelo.

i think its important, according to wikipedia and other tourists. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_of_Bruges anyways! after that we were bored of bruges, and decided to go to the sea. i'll continue this in the next post because this one already has too many pictures......next day's blog!