Waffles, Windmills and Waves

I guess I've committed to this alliteration title thing I have going.. But this is the last post from my trip so the last time you'll have to deal with my extraordinary creativity, I promise.

After my stay in Lille I took the train to Bruges in Belgium, where Emily and her friends were also going for a day trip to sightsee and check out the Bruges Beer Festival. They had taken a different method of transportation there so we were relying on cell phones in order to find each other in Bruges, but Emily's phone wasn't working outside of France so I had resigned myself to a day of wandering on my own when I happened to walk into a fry shop and find her and a few others! I still can't get over my great luck of finding them in Bruges, with a city centre of 20,000 people. It was great to have a group of girls to sightsee with since I have been doing most of my traveling on my own.

We spent a couple hours checking out the city centre, visiting the chocolate museum and, of course, sampling waffles:

I must admit I liked the one I had in Lille, which was topped with Nutella, better than this one with just chocolate. Still delicious though! 

In the afternoon we went to the Bruges Beer Festival, which was really fun! There were hundreds of beers to try and being 20-something-year-old ladies, none of us were really beer connoisseurs, so we basically just picked the stands that looked the coolest or seemed popular to use our drink tokens at. I had to leave my festival guide with Emily so I can't recall exactly which beers I tried, but they were all delicious!

This was my first of four beer that I tried, a raspberry cider type drink from Delirium. 

The Belfry of Bruges on the main square, Grote Markt

A beautiful canal at night

I couchsurfed that night in Bruges with a lady who knows someone who is currently living in my hometown, Nelson. What a small world this is! The next morning as I was walking to the train station, I experienced the first episode in a two-day bad luck streak: walking out of a bakery with my big backpack on, a glass shelf on the wall somehow caught on my backpack and fell to the ground and broke, costing me 35 euros to replace it. Lesson learned from this: never go into small shops with a big backpack on.

I hopped on a train for the 20-minute trip to Ghent, and before exploring the city I dropped off my backpack at my host's place which was conveniently located right next to the train station. Then I took my use-it guide (the best maps ever, with cool suggestions of where to go off the tourist path and loads of interesting facts) and headed towards the city centre.

Bikes and more bikes for as far as the eye can see (train station bike parking I think)

Beautiful canals near the city centre

Canal selfie

The Gravensteen, originating from the Middle Ages

Gravity passageway 

Saint-Nicholas Church 

After one night in Ghent I continued onwards to the Netherlands! This was my first time in this country, whereas I had already been to Switzerland, France and Belgium when I was in Europe three years ago, so I was really excited. However, before I made it to the Netherlands, episode two of my bad luck streak occurred: I mistakenly got on a reservation-only train without having a reservation, so I had to pay 25 euros. I was lucky, though, because the ticket checker was very nice and didn't charge me the full ticket and reservation price which was somewhere upwards of 95 euros, after I explained my confusion about which train I was supposed to get on since it didn't specify it on my ticket. That was a flaw I found in the train systems in Belgium and the Netherlands: when you buy a ticket from point A to point B, that's all it says on the ticket, as in it doesn't say which exact trains you should take. The benefit of this is that you can hop on whichever train you like in the direction of point B, as long as it fits the specifications on your ticket, and you can stop along the way and jump back on a different train as you please. The downside, though, is that you have to either ask someone or consult the massive train schedule board on the platforms to figure out which trains will get you to where you want to go without needing a reservation. I feel like they could have a better system for this, but who am I to comment, other than a confused and slightly poorer backpacker.

Delft is a beautiful and charming city! Aside from the cyclists who are everywhere and by whom I was almost killed on several occasions, the historic centre has a laid-back, relaxed feel, which I really enjoyed. The canals are everything that they're talked up to be, too.

One of a zillion canals running through the city centre

Nieuwe Kerk (New Church), built in the 15th century

The colours of the famous Delftware on a street wall

The next day, having already seen the majority of Delft, I took the tram for 40 minutes through The Hague straight to the beach!!!

It might be winter but the beach is still the beach :)

After wandering along the sand for an hour, I headed back into The Hague and checked out the sites, including the Escher museum which was super cool! Escher is the guy that drew the famous hands drawing each other print, but his other works are also amazing!

This Metamorphosis print has a few versions. I think this is the second, 4m long, and it starts and ends with the same design. Pretty neat stuff!

The Peace Palace, often called the seat of international law. 

There were a few less canals in The Hague but they were equally as beautiful as everywhere else. 

The following morning I bid farewell to the wonderful people who had hosted me for two nights and took the train north along the coast for 45 minutes to Haarlem. This city was suggested to me by one of my hosts as a great place to visit, since Lonely Planet had dubbed it 4th on their 'Ten hidden gems of Europe' list. They were right, Haarlem is a really special, charming little city. I was only there for the day, so I left my backpack in the train station luggage lockers and ventured out on the town. The city centre is quite small and I was able to follow the self-guided tour on the map I got from the train station all around the city AND check out the Teyler Museum, all in about 4 hours.

The Teyler Museum was somewhat expensive as museums go (11 euros) but highly recommended to me by my host so I thought I'd give it a try and it was definitely worth it. It's the first and oldest museum in the Netherlands, opened to the public in 1784. They have everything to do with arts and sciences in the 12 different display rooms, from fossils to coins to paintings to medical equipment. I could easily have spent several hours in there, and the audio guide would have been good to have but I had a limited amount of time so I just enjoyed looking at all they had to offer.

The super-originally-named Grote Kerk ('Large Church') on the Grote Markt, Haarlem's central square.

Can't get enough of the canal selfies!

De Adriaan windmill, originally dating from 1779 but burnt down in 1932 and rebuilt in 2002.

Then, to my final stop: Amsterdam! The weather was quite awful when I was there, although on my first full day the rain held off for the duration of my city tour (which ended up being just me and the guide since it's not high season. Weird, but I learned lots more!).

The Royal Palace in the Dam Square

Canal shot with the South Church in the background, a popular photo spot I'm told.

On the last full day of my trip I spent a couple hours at the Rijksmuseum, which was recently renovated to the tune of 375 million euros over 10 years. I really should have given myself an entire day or even two for this place. It's massive! There's 8,000 objects of art and history to see! I guess I'll have to come back another time to take a better look.

The Rijksmuseum

That evening I went with my couchsurfing host to a 'concert' by the Kafka Band, which is a group of seven musicians from Prague who adapted Kafka's novel 'The Castle' into a multimedia musical performance. It was actually really cool, and the music, although dark and slightly depressing, was good as well. My host is Dutch but studying Czech language and literature, which is why she was eager to host someone who is currently living in Prague.

The guy standing up was reading lines from the book in German, and the English subtitles were projected on the screen along with a graphic image while the band played.

Since I ended off my trip in the country of canals, I thought I should end off this post with one last canal picture, although with the murky water and the leafless trees on the banks, this isn't the most picturesque one of them all. The trade-off between traveling in the off-season when the cities aren't at their most beautiful versus the crowds of tourists in the high-season is definitely won by the former option.

When I was last in Europe I loved using Paint to draw out where I'd been, so I thought I'd continue that tradition for this trip.

I drew up a little map to get a more visual idea of my trip.

Well, that's it! I'm back in Prague now, about to start my second week of classes. So far things are going well and I'm enjoying meeting all the new exchange students and having four other Canadians from my university back home studying here and also living in the same dorm as I am. We've had sunny and warm weather for the last couple weeks, and I'm really enjoying running in the park across the street from my dorm which seems to have an unlimited number of trails. Life is good!

I hope some of you are still reading, I know this was a long one, but I promise these posts will be shorter from now on!

Cheers!
-Sonja