Belgium & Somme

I can't believe that I am done traveling. March went by so fast I didnt have time to blink! On Monday we left at six in the morning (finally not two) for Belgium. This time we took a bus and luckily for our last trip we got our favorite driver Glynn! He is the greatest. Such a sweet heart, bus so clean, helps us with our baggage and is just the bomb. To get to Belgium we had to get on the ferry which was a good two hour drive. We were all out cold! Haha sadly enough we expected everything to go smoothly... but nothing ever can when we are traveling. We all woke up to our professor telling us that our ferry had broken down and the next one didn't leave until10:30. Yeah it was 8 haha such awful news. Lucky enough we all didn't have to stay on the bus. That meant everyone got off except a few of us who stayed to stretch out on all of the empty seats haha. It was great! Another plus was that I woke up to a big DC on my seat. Mike heard me talking about how I was dying for one and of course snagged me one. Such a sweetheart. Finally 10:30 rolled around and we drove onto the ferry. It was huge! Little did we know it was going to be like a cruise... We got off our bus and went up to one of the restaurants to hangout. It was nice to get off of the bus for awhile. We grabbed a little food and then we went outside onto the dock. It was SO pretty. The ocean about killed me though... I wanted to go straight to the beach. The fact that it was such great weather didn't help either. The ferry ride was only about an hour and a half. Once we got back onto our bus, we had another two hours on the bus. Ugh just remembering that wares me out. We had so much bus time ha. I thought we were never going to make it to Brugge. When we arrived it was three in the afternoon. This time we were staying in hotels! But not only just a hotel... It was an Ibis hotel. Haha these are our favorite hotels ever. They are always amazing and this one was the best by far! I roomed with Annie this trip and it was actually our first time being roomies on the road believe it or not. We all ditched our stuff and headed out into the town. It was so sunny and beautiful we didn't need our jackets. Ah it was so nice. Crazy to think that I was in Brugge three weeks ago. It was fun going back because it was totally different. The plaza was much more crowded and all of the restaurants had their tables out. It was darling as ever! Everyone was loving it. We grabbed dinner and since we all had decided to go off of chocolate a few days before.... we went into one of the five billion shops and just checked it out :)

Yeah it was absolutely delicious. Going off of sugar was a great success this trip. Haha. Everything shuts down super early so we headed back to the Ibis, hung out and watched TV. We were watching MTV and thoroughly enjoyed it! We forget how much we miss it haha. All being crammed into a small hotel room was too fun. I realized how much i'm going to miss my girls and those nights! We were up super late just laughing about all of our adventures. Crazy how they are all coming to an end in about two weeks....

The next day we got up and headed straight to breakfast. Ibis never ever disappoints. After getting plenty of eggs and what not into our systems we headed to the chocolate museum with the group. It was really fun! It was the whole history of chocolate. After we had time to do what we pleased so we went and enjoyed the nice sun, shopped, and maybe tried some frites.

obviously they weren't very good.

After enjoying Belgium we hopped on the bus and professor Dursteler gave us a World War 1 lecture. I absolutely loved learning all about this time period. I didn't know as much as I should have so it was a great learning experience. Following his lecture we stopped at museum and it was awesome. We then walked outside and there was some carnival thing going on. We stopped and tried some scone ball things! They were wonderful. Just like all of the other food in this country. Ugggh. Then we got back on the bus and went on our way to Somme. Happily we checked into another Ibis for the night.

The next day was probably one of my favorite day trips. We first went to the largest cathedral in Europe. It was called the Notre Dame d'Amiens. Yeah it was another cathedral... but it was massive! Pretty cool. Then we got to wander around a bit before we had to leave. It was a fun little town. Our next stop was absolutely amazing. It was one of the best preserved battlegrounds from WWI. Just another one of the most eye opening experiences I've had on this trip. We got to walk through the actual trenches. It was sweet! There were all of the different burial grounds too. I loved it!

We then got back on our bus to go back to the Ferry. Super quick trip. Yes it was a long haul back but luckily everything went smoothly and we got home before midnight. Just in time for everyone to crowd the library to finish up homework for the next morning. A great way to end our travels!