Bruges Belgium – 07/01 “Oh God…… sh*t”

(Michelle) Laura had heard the Bruges was a really picturesque town in Belgium that might be worth a peek, so we decided to go there on Sunday. The town is very pretty, so we mostly just walked around, but we did briefly check out a few of the main attractions. First of all, I am sure you will all be impressed to hear, we went to a church (Bloedbasiliek) where we saw a few coagulated drops of Christ’s blood. I hope nobody calls me a heretic, but I don’t understand how you could ever determine that that was actually Christ’s real blood, but I donated and prayed to it anyway (the picture attached is Laura being offered a view). We also saw a begijnhof, which started in the 13th century as a religious community of unmarried or widowed women. I am not sure why this is different than a convent, but I think maybe it was just slightly less strict. I think that it is still being used for something like that purpose even today. We saw in guidebooks for other cities in Belgium and the Netherlands that they had begijnhofs as well, but once you’ve seen one begjjnhof….
We were using the map given to us by the hotel, but nothing on the map was exactly where it was marked, so we never found anything on the first try. We finally found De Halve Maan brewery where we tried a beer they called “the fool of Bruges”.
We found a hostel that had dorms and private rooms, so we booked a private triple there for the three of us. It was a decent looking room, and while we had to share the toilet in the hallway with other rooms, we had our own shower…. Which turned out to be the worst shower we have encountered so far in our travels, but unfortunately for Laura, she was the one who discovered that fact. She rolled out of bed first in the morning to head to the shower. TJ and I were sort of awake, but not really and Laura didn’t know we could hear her. About 30 seconds after she entered the shower, the saddest voice ever cried out “Oh God”. TJ and I heard this and we totally lost it, of course we didn’t know what the problem was yet, so I guess we are bad friends. TJ does a perfect recreation of the “Oh God” and it was repeated for laughs several times over the next couple of days. Just when we were about to contain the laughter about a minute later, we heard an under the breath S bomb dropped, and we lost it all over again. I think we were still laughing when she got out of the shower. So, I went into the shower next… The stall itself was ok, but to turn the water on, you had to stick your finger into a dark hole in the wall and feel around for a button that you had to press really hard and exactly the right way and then it would shoot out a hard blast of water (Laura’s first “Oh God” ??). The water didn’t stay on for one second after you stopped pressing that button and there was no way to control the temp (perhaps the S bomb). My shower lasted about 10 seconds.

(TJ) Ditto on Bruges being a very picturesque town and yes Michelle is a heretic for not believing that we did not see Jesus blood. As far as the oh god! Moment, I was pretty sure Laura had just gotten shocked with a nice burst of cold water, and yes I’m a bad person for laughing my head off as it happened and after. Also don’t believe the bit about Belgium having the best “French” fries in the world, as far as I could see it was not any better than any other in the world that I have.

(Michelle) TJ did not step into the shower, so he cannot really comment on the cause of “Oh God”. I thought the fries were pretty good. We had some good ones in the Netherlands too.