Bruges, Belgium

Andrée-Anne was in Bruges 10 years ago and it is still one of her favorite town. Without it being planned, we stayed in the same small hostel from her last visit. It still looks the same so she recognised it right away as we walked in. Belgium being famous for beers, we tried a few different ones from the bar downstairs. We also enjoyed an happy hour at 1 Euro a beer, the cheapest one in a bar so far on our trip. We also went for mussels and fries as they are famous too, but they were deceiving as we were out of season. We really enjoyed walking in all the small streets surrounded with old buildings and canals. We also went up the Belfort, a tall tower on the main Markt Place containing the famous carillon. The view from that high was amazing even for a steep 18 Euro and 366 steps.

 

Belfort

Markt Place Restaurant

 

Beer Wall

Carrillon Drum

View from the top

Stairs to Belfort

Canal View

 

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Amsterdam was an interesting stop. It is a place for people that like to party of course, but is also a very pretty city with all the canals full of house boats and old architecture. Red light district is also very famous with all its coffee shops and all the small alleys with girls waiting for clients behind glass doors. This city is also bike friendly. We've never seen that many bikes in the streets and parked everywhere. They have dedicated bike paths that are busier than the streets.

Train station

Train track

Canal

Old buildings

More bikes

Us

House boats

House boats

Canal

Big bike parking

Lübeck, Germany

Lübeck was our first stop in Germany. We read about this small medieval town and decided it was worth a look. It was rebuilt after the old settlement burned down in 1128. It has a really nice architecture from the 12th century.

Roskilde and the Viking Ship Museum, Denmark

This was our last stop in Scandinavia for now. We were feeling that you can't come to this part of Europe without learning about the Vikings. That is why we visited the museum back in Stockholm and that we stopped here in Roskilde to see the Viking Ship museum. They found 5 old boats in the bottom of the see from the Viking time and dug them out to restore them. They rebuilt the ships as good as they could with the pieces left. It is a really interesting process. Now, they are also building copies of ships, by hand, with the same tools and techniques the Vikings were using at the time.

Viking Ship Museum

Andrée-Anne as a Viking

Seb as a Viking

The copies in action

The best way to spend our last 18 kroners.

To leave Scandinavia, we took a train to Germany. When the train gets to Fehmarn Belt, they put the whole train on the ferry to cross to Germany. We were impressed as we weren't expecting that.