Legally Blonde's Proceedings

 On Friday, December 16th I switched countries again.  I walked to the train station and all of my good train mojo from the days prior went out the window and there was a bit of a snafu that resulted in me sitting in a Brussels train station (not the one a block from my hotel) for 2 hours waiting on my train.  Luckily there was an Au Bon Pain where I could get something to eat and sit while I waited.  I had two stops planned for this day.  First stop was in Aachen, Germany.   Since Aachen isn't a town that everyone is familiar with, here is a map.  You can see Aachen is right where the borders of Germany, Belgium, and The Netherlands meet. I was so happy to finally be on a train, I took a pic!  It was about an hour and 20 minutes from Brussels to Aachen. Since I wasn't staying overnight in Aachen, I got a luggage locker for the day at the train station in Aachen.  This is one reason I was worried about getting delayed in Brussels and when I a...

Thursday, December 15th began in sunny, but cold, Bruges.  I find that people don't stir very early in Europe and towns like Bruges, which are day trip destinations, tend to be especially sleepy in the morning and just a great time to wander.   I walked to a breakfast place called That's Toast Then I went for a walk through an area of town I hadn't gone through the day before. Saint John's Hospital (founded in the mid-12th Century) Church of Our Lady Next I went to the Beginhof This is a place where religious women live.  They aren't necessarily all nuns, though Benedictine nuns do live in one of the buildings.  There are signs up telling you to be silent, so it's usually peaceful to walk around. After walking around until about 11:30, I checked out of the hotel and took a train to Brussels.  My hotel in Brussels was very near the Central Train Station so I walked about a block and checked into my hotel.  I set out to get some lunch, walking through the Gra...