Belgium

 We arrived in the evening to Brussels, Belgium. We had planned on seeing Grand Place and Manneken Piss before we went to bed, but once we were there, the city seemed more sketchy than we were anticipating. We had to park our car on the street and walk to our hotel. We had to pass through a homeless encampment to get there. So we decided to stay in our hotel all night instead. We woke up early the next morning to see those two things in Brussels before we headed over to Bruges.

Ghent

Gravensteen Castle (lots of torture)

Antwerp

Centraal Station

Grand Place

A medieval Market Square

Manneken Piss

I liked the art around the city:

We drove over to Bruges. There were a lot of bicyclists all over here.

What a charming city! We took a canal ride when we arrived. It was a great way to see the area.

We ate Belgian waffles for lunch. I'm not sure it it was true or not, but the Nutella seemed to taste so mucher richer and better there!

Then we walked around town a bit, bought some chocolate to take home and wandered the Market Square.

Another church we popped into

After Bruges we stopped in Ghent. We visited Gravensteen Castle. It was alarmingly full of torture stories, but fun to visit!

These flags represent the top 5 torture stories from the castle.

We had to return our rental car in Antwerp by 4:30pm. It was trickier than we thought it would be to find the rental car area in Centraal Station. After we returned the car, we picked up some food (a nice Smash Burger joint) and got some snacks.

Centraal Station is one of the top sites to see in Antwerp according to the internet.

McKinley helped us get our train tickets for the morning.