Thursday, July 1
Got up early (5:00) and I decided to see what Brugge is like without all the tourists, so I grabbed the camera and hit the streets. Typical European town morn with great looking bread and pastries being delivered, empty beer cans encircling the statues in the town square attesting to the prior evenings revelers, sea birds looking for a morning snack.
Today’s agenda included some pretty normal tourist stuff: canal boat ride, chocolate shopping, a bier break. We also did a couple of not-so touristy activities including a trip to the police station to file a report on an iPod that went missing, and a multi-stop cab ride trying to locate a pair of glasses. Glasses were found and it was off to Rotterdam via Antwerp. On the train, we were talking to one of our compartment mates and when we told him where we were coming from we had to work a bit on translation skills. We said “Broo-ge”, long u and only one g. Turns out we were in “Bruhg-guh.” Makes sense to me.
On our arrival at Rotterdam Centraal Station, we found a pack of greeters handing out Tour de France Grand Departure literature. I was glad to see that the host city for this year’s tour was really getting behind the event. We still had one more train leg, from Centraal to Alexander Station, nearer to our hotel. Alexander is quite a ways east of the city center and I use the term “nearer to our hotel” with a bit of hesitation. Both the distance from the city center and the distance from our closest transport station to hotel were greater than expected. Such is independent travel and it’ll mean we”ll burn off more of that big Dutch breakfast.