Brugge, Belgium & Hamburg, Germany

The train into Brugge was a bit full with pretty much everyone on the train heading into that direction. Once there, we took a cab to our hotel since we had all of our luggage. Dana booked another beautiful hotel, Hotel Navarra. This building has been around since the 1600 and served multiple different roles from the home of the official console of Spain, commercial court, and now a hotel.

Luckily, they gave us early check in so we dropped off our bag and took off to explore. It was a little afternoon so we went to get some food, but not too much since we had reservations for dinner. What else would we get but fries and waffles. We split a pulled pork fries that were fully loaded and then some waffles made out of oat flour. The waffles were probably my favorite of all the waffles we had this trip. The oat flour gave it a unique taste that was slightly sweet.

The Belfry

After pigging out, we took a 30 minute canal tour on one of the many canal rides through Brugge. It’s a great way to get a quick overview of the city without walking. We had some time to kill before dinner, so we aimlessly walked around and observed the random sights of the city, including the Markt square. The main buildings of the Markt is the towering Belfry and the Provincial Hof. The Belfry was built in 1240 is 272 feet high and is the most prominent building in Brugge. It is actually leaning slightly to the east, so some people call it the Leaning Tower of Brugge. This tower holds 47 bells that weights a total of 27.5 tonne!

For dinner, Dana made reservations at De Gastro Restaurants. To eat at this place, you have to make reservations a couple of months in advance, and I have to say it is warranted. This was the best meal we had so far on the trip. We had the beef cappaccio for appetizer a couple of  drinks. For dinner I had the filet mignon with a pepper sauce while dana fried their version of the Flemish stew. Everything was phenomenal and we left completely stuffed. However, Dana had to get her sweets so we went to end the night with some gelato at Da Vinci.

The day had finally come for me to pickup the truck from the port. Unfortunately, the port is far out of both Antwerp and Brugge and there was no clear public transport to the terminal. I ended up taking the inner-city train, connected to another train, and a bus all the way to the closest stop, and then walked the 5k to the terminal. This required me to start my day around 5am before the Sun and was up since the total journey would take 3 hours. It was actually quite peaceful to walk that morning and nice to get some steps.

Once I got there, the process of getting the truck back was relatively simple. I scanned my passport, got a card, went to the front worth he paperwork, went through the gate, and there she was! I was so relieved to see the truck in one piece, not damaged, and nothing missing! The truck even started up on  the first crank with no issue. I got the paperwork signed off and drove her out of the gate.

Very odd-feeling for petrol owners in the US

I stopped in the parking lot and took the time to somewhat reset up the truck. The license plates had to be installed, I turned on the house batteries and Redarc, rebooked up the solar panels, and turned on the fridge. I also did a quick reorganization but just did enough to get on the road. First stop was to fill up on gas. The first surprise was that the lowest level Europe has is 95. The second was that the petrol handle is green while diesel is black. This made me do a double take to make sure I was right (In US, diesel is green). Once filled up, I headed back to Brugge. Once in Brugge, the truck felt like a tank in the streets. Everything was a tight fit in the small European streets, but manageable. All the off-roading definitely helped.

Basilica of the Holy Blood

Once back with Dana, we went to walk around Lover’s Park. It is a beautiful park with a nice lake. We then walked the city more until we got to the Basilica of the Holy Blood, which was built right next to the town hall in 1134. The chapel was shockingly beautiful inside. The priest was there with the holy relic of the blood of Christ, but since we are not religious, we didn’t wait in line to go see it. Forest dinner, we continued our food tour with some Italian where I got the carbonara and Dana got lasagna.

Traveling is all about meeting new people

The next morning we packed our bags and started the long drive to Hamburg. On the way, I stopped by and visited someone who helped me plan my trip, Jelle. I met him through my company and it was nice to meet him in person and chat. He event let me borrow a Jerry can since I couldn’t bring mine over. If anyone in Belgium needs help on building there rig, Jelle from Overland Gear Shop is your guy.

Driving to Hamburg was overall pretty straightforward. The one thing I appreciate about European drivers compared to Californian drivers specifically is they know how to use a two lane highway. The left lane is pretty much solely for passing other cars. Passing on the right is a strict no and could be a to ticket, so drivers are pretty good on clearing out the left lane if they are slower than driver’s behind. You also have to be really careful about speeding. Sure, the Autobahn has straights where there are no speed limits, but there are multiple areas where there is a limit and it changes constantly. Germany also uses lots of speed cameras and I’m pretty sure once I got into Hamburg I got flashed by one.

City Hall

When we got to the hotel, I had to fit my truck I to the tiny spiny spot left for me. It was so small that I had to open my window, climb out the window, then open the door enough to close the window with my arm. Since we were only spending a little more than half a day in Hamburg, we went straight to exploring. Hamburg is like Berlin where it’s a mix of lots of modern building with historical since a lot of it was destroyed in World War II. We went to the old port and just walked down toward the city hall and the main lake.  We pretty much then walked to dinner, which was some pretty good Thai food.

I’m not sure if things have changed since I study abroad in Europe, but everywhere Dana and I have been seems to have much larger portions than I remember. It seemed to be like American size portions. Not sure if it’s to make the price worth it or what since so far each meal was averaging 25-30 euros a person per plate. It could also be this is the first time I’m traveling not as a broke college student who is eating cheap and spending money on alcohol and partying.

On the way back from dinner, we pass by a spot in Hamburg that pretty much had a Vegas vibe. Bars and strip clubs are everywhere down this street. Seemed like an interesting place if you want to go party at night or maybe it’s the destination for European bachelor parties. Overall, Hamburg was ok for us, but we did some such a short time there.