Sun 21 – Tues 23 June 2015

On Sunday we packed up and left Fran’s. It was really nice to be able to unpack and settle into a place for a week, but that reminded us of the infinite amount of crap we have lugged with us!

We headed off towards Belgium, stopping at Vimmy Ridge – the Canadian memorial. France gifted this piece of land to Canada as a thank you for their efforts in the First World War. It was so nice to see the uniforms of Parks Canada.

We continued to drive towards Brurges. Matt got stuck in a crazy French city near the border. It was a bit of a stressful drive. Even the Garmin got confused! We arrived in Bruges in the early evening and checked into our hostel. We had a pizza in the pub, did some laundry and some more planning. We are still underestimating the amount of time it takes to plan and blog!

The next day we woke and had breakfast provided by the hostel. We headed out for a free walking tour (our new favourite thing to do when we only have a day or two in a city). Our tour guide was great. He was an American clown by trade so balloon figures featured on his tour – he used the group to act out different bits of history as well. He took us to all of the main sites and pointed out a lot of sites from the movie In Bruges with Colin Farrell (which we hadn’t seen). Another great highlight was discovering cherry beer at the beer museum! We were quite tuckered out so we went back to the hostel for a break (and watched a bit of Sherlock). Matt did a beer tasting session at the hostel bar in the evening while Natalie did more planing. Then we headed out for some ‘Belgian’ fries and to see the city at night – incredible (the city and the fries!!

On Tuesday morning we left Bruges and did some errands to prepare for the music festival we were heading to next. Sitting in traffic for nearly an hour and a hectic time trying to find the IKEA on the outskirts of Brussels was challenging, but our mission for a few cheap pillows, blankets and folding chairs was a success. A grocery shop in a Lidal also proved time consuming and then driving through Brussels city centre at rush hour left us exhausted and wanting to just relax for the evening. We were ‘sightseeing-ed-out’ so we watched ‘In Bruges’ (in Brussels haha) and had a nice long sleep in a proper bed. Camping and sleeping on yoga mats was on the horizon for the following five nights…