Kevin Runs Europe: Day 8

Distance: 8.3 miles (13.4 km)

Off to Belgium! We took a bus to Antwerp (Eurolines this time. They didn't have Student Agency). I was expecting a lot from Antwerp. Everything I've read says Antwerp is better than Brussels - more to do, more to see, not so bureaucratic and boring, blah blah blah. Antwerp was surprisingly unspectacular. Aside from the cathedral and the area around the town square with its ornate 16th century guild houses, the city failed to impress me (granted, we were only there for an afternoon). It's a bit dirtier, more traffic-clogged, and more architecturally bland than I imagined. When we stepped through the doors of the city's most impressive and famous sight - it's cathedral - we were welcomed by a huge portrait of a smiling and waving Pope Francis next to a sign that read: "Entrance, 6 Euros." Oh, the irony. Since we'll be seeing plenty of cathedrals on this trip, we decided it wasn't worth it.

After checking out the town square and taking advantage of Starbucks's free wifi and free bathrooms, we walked to a laundromat to wash all our thoroughly stenchified clothes. Curtis was nice enough to sit and watch the laundry while I ran.

I started my run along the River Scheldt. You may have noticed that when I run in cities, I tend to take note of the architecture and urban design of the place I'm running in. That's how I came to know Amsterdam as an urban planner's dream city, and that's also how I've come to see Antwerp as an urban planning nightmare... but a nightmare with tons of potential to turn into a pleasant dream. The city center's chaotic web of streets was probably designed for carriages, bikes, and cable cars, but now is mostly choked up with automobiles. I actually just learned (after the fact) that Antwerp has the second worst traffic in the developed world (after Brussels) - even worse than Los Angeles. Also, unlike Dusseldorf, which chose to bury it's riverfront highway underground in the 1990s and top it with pedestrian plazas and trees, Antwerp's wide riverfront is mostly consumed by a consistently traffic-jammed road and large covered parking lots (but with a really cool castle thrown in the mix, a castle that one day ought to be surrounded by a big, green, riverfront park). Luckily they do have a bike/pedestrian path along the riverfront, but I wanted to run on the other, greener side of the river, only I didn't see any bridges. I thought, how can a city exist on both sides of the river without any links between the two sides? Then I remembered that they're only linked with tunnels. The River Scheldt is very wide and I suppose it's more economical and practical (with all the river traffic) to build tunnels instead of bridges. I found the entrance to the pedestrian tunnel and had the bizarre mid-run experience of riding an escalator hundreds of feet down into the earth. It was really strange running through the seemingly endless (though actually .25 to .5ish mile-long, I would guess) subterranean, white-walled tube in the ground, meeting bikers, rollerbladers, walkers, and even moped riders on my way to the escalator that would take me up on the other side. The other side of the river had great views of the city and was far from the hustle and bustle of the city.

After returning to the laundromat and changing, we walked to the train station and took the train to Brugge (or Bruges). Brugge is the capital of the Belgian province of West Flanders and was, at one time in the Middle Ages, the most important commercial city in Europe. It's just a small Belgian city now, but it's former glory is evident everywhere. Visiting Brugge is like going back to the 16th century, but with lots of tourists walking around. It's extremely clean, and filled with miles of streets and canals lined with medieval-looking houses and shops.

After arriving in Brugge, we found a bar with free wifi, looked up hostels, and found one pretty close to us. When we got there, though, they told us they were completely full. Looking online, we found that all the hostels in Brugge were full. We called one just to make sure, but to no avail. We then looked up hotels and couldn't find any even close to our budget range. So after lots of walking around, trying to figure out what to do - even looking for sheltered areas that we could potentially sleep in, we settled on the train station, which luckily was still open. It definitely wasn't a fun night. We got woken up by a security guard who told us we had to get out unless we had a ticket. It was raining and cold outside, and we sure as heck didn't want to have to sleep out there, so I told him we were going to Gent the next morning but hadn't bought our tickets yet. He told us we had to buy them now and walked us to the ticket machine. We went through the process of buying the tickets, but when it came time to pay, we didn't have enough change and the machine wouldn't accept our credit cards. The guard was nice enough to tell us we could stay and just buy our tickets in the morning. Thank goodness! I settled back down onto the cold, hard station floor, thankful that I wasn't on a colder, harder, wet sidewalk. A not-so-good ending to a not-so-great day, but at least we had a roof over our heads, and it was free!