Vegetable'd!

I'm dedicating the title of this post to the fact that for the first time in quite a few days, I had a full plate of vegetables for dinner! I normally eat alot of veggies at home, but fresh salad doesn't quite fit into the whole backpacker's lifestyle, so it's been rough ;)

Bruges was amazing, probably my favourite stop so far. We only spent one full day there, but it was a perfect, calm, relaxing day - we rented bikes from the hostel and rode everywhere, all day. To give you an idea of size, we made it around the entire city (which is lined with canals) in less than an hour. Afterwards, we checked out the city centre. I went on a Chocolate Factory tour which was amazing... in the end, I successfully tried Belgian chocolate, waffles, fries, and beer - the 4 must-do's, apparently. The locals were super friendly too - way different than in Paris!





In Bruges, we had windmills right outside our hostel!

This is for Kat - a Belgian kitchenware store

Dog sculpture in the Chocolate Factory!


We're in Amsterdam now and are leaving for Berlin tomorrow. Amsterdam's been... interesting. It's definitely different here. A ton of history (yesterday we toured the Van Gogh museum, today I toured the Anne Frank House)... and the Red Light District is interesting, in both a crazy and sad way. We walked around for a bit in the evening with another traveller we met from the States, and it really hit me hard how depressing it is to have prostitution so accepted in a city. The drug use here is insane too - you can literally walk into a "coffee shop" and ask the barista for a few grams of weed, and there coffee shops are even more abundant (and more crowded) than our very own Starbucks in Van. It was weird, I actually had to get out of that part of town fast, not because it was scary (it's not - it's full of tourists) - but because I was so sad.

I am UBC? No, I AMsterdam!

Terrible, I know, but I had to include this - found in the pavement right outside the front doors to the city's Old Church.

Tonight I think we're going to take it easy and prep for an early morning tomorrow. On one final note, I'll say that the Dutch eat ALOT of chocolate. For breakfast this morning, the hostel served us bread with chocolate spread (think Nutella, but with white AND milk chocolate) and a box of real chocolate sprinkles to cover the bread with. It was alot of sugar... and after talking to a Dutch lady, apparently this is normal!