OK, we are in Belgium still in a beautiful place centuries old. Bruges (or Brugge) is a town which has lots of churches, lace and really, really good chocolate. Craig and I spent 2 nights there staying in a hostel next door to the rowing club, a wind farm and a drawbridge. The hostel was nice (depsite the fact I arrived to fine my mattress covered in dog pee) and Marcel the owner was very friendly. The barmaid was not very nice (she had a dog) but she was in the minority. When we got on the bus the bus driver spoke english, arranged the cheapest tiket for us gave us timetables and the girl on the bus even helped eith the best bus to catch on Sunday (trickier than you think when half the buses don't run on Sunday). Craig and I sepnt a whole day wandering around the town and looking at bridges and canals and trying to decide if we wanted to catch the bus to Holland. We didn't in the end but it was cool that we could if we wanted. We have lots of belgian chocolates that we are slowly eating on the trains,Yum!

   To begin with I am sorry for the spelling mistakes, all the keys are in different places. As Craig finished we headed to Angouleme, a place we picked to stop because it was convenient. We booked an HI hostel (YHA) and headed to it, the guy when we booked advised to catch bus number 7 or 9, but we could not find a bus stop and the tourist office had closed so we walked for a bit. We found a bus stop that seemed to be on the route but for future travellers to Angouleme it is faster and much simpler to walk. They named several bus stops Denis Papin and the circuit does a complicated one way route. The hostel was on on island in the middle of a canal and had bugs, lots and lots of bugs and no curtains. The man at the hostel could not answer any questions about the town so we walked up the hill and had dinner. Angouleme however was a beautiful town at night, with spires and a really safe feel about it.

   From Angouleme we were meant to go to St Malo but we couldn't get accomodation so we stayed in Rennes. Rennes is the fourth largest town in France but is not mentioned in our Lonely Planet guides. We were even lucky enough to have an American tour group staying at the hostel and a group of intellectually handicapped people. One of the young fellows felt it was necessary to stare at me whenever he could, another just like to sit and stare at Craigs watch, all of 10 cm away from the watch face.

   From Rennes we went to Mont Saint Michel(GoogleEarthLink). I would highly recommend going there but it is touristy so it is better to take some food. This island is now attached to land by a long road that gets flooded each time there is a spring tide. It has nuns and monks and the live in the abbey right at the top and there is a village below (well more of a winding path with buildings filling the gaps). It is really an amazing sight and it is staggering to think it has been occupied for 1300 years. That night we got stopped in the street by a stranger who wanted us to savour our ice creams on the top of our mouths!!!!!

Mont Saint Michel

   Today, Craig and I travelled through Paris (coming back later) to Brussels and we are heading to Brugge/Bruges. We have spent the afternoon looking around Brussels eating frites with mayonnaise and seriously wondering about the belgians. We just saw a statue of a boy peeing (Manneken Pis) and they seem to dress it up for Xmas etc???

The world famous Manneken Pis